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Comment by studius | Hacker News Reader

Git is actually simpler, here's why:

No central server to setup or required, period.

Whether it's doing it on your own or sharing with 100 random strangers, you don't have to setup an account for them.

Yes, SVN can handle patching, so you could email those patches also, but it's based on client-server, so someone has to setup the server and add new accounts.

Googlers have used it internally a lot as a client when their central server wasn't that, even though git itself struggled with the scale, which is why they hadn't changed over to it exclusively even server-side. If it was that complex, why would they do that?

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> Git is actually simpler, here's why:

> No central server to setup or required, period.

I've never seen a company work like this, though.

Oh, you would be surprised how common this is.

If you don't need access control, it's the easiest way to get started with source control for small teams

> No central server to setup or required, period.

Someone should let every single person and organization that uses git know about this!

Maybe, maybe not.

As a developer I love that git gives me the ability to create my own repo anywhere on any machine, just with git installed. Repos can be synced and patches exchanged in numerous ways and any decentral copy is a full backup of everything.

But as someone having worked in larger companies, there are huuge red flags with this that you wouldn't want the wrong people in your company to know about. Fully functional repos anywhere means central control is impossible. You can't just limit access in any meaningful way, you can't control info leaks, if someone can carry out a git clone on an USB stick. And full repo with history means that you always know everything about the work performance of all colleagues, past and present.

> central control is impossible.

It's possible and we use it at work. Most major source control servers that support git also support user and role-based control over PR merges, force commits, etc.

There's little difference between a user that has a copy of the source as SVN and that of git, other than the git client itself allows the user to manage their commits on their local computer.

> no central server required

same with svn if that's your preferred workflow.

> you dont have to set up an account for them

of course not. they could just make a merge request.

Honestly I like both git and svn but I find this distinction to be contrived. I use svn in a decentralised manner daily with no problems

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