Difference between Git and GitHub

Question

Git is a revision control system, a tool to manage your source code history.

GitHub is a hosting service for Git repositories.

So they are not the same thing: Git is the tool, GitHub is the service for projects that use Git.

To get your code to GitHub, have a look here.

In the SVN analogy, Git replaces SVN, while GitHub replaces SourceForge :P

If this project of yours is new, then you can still commit to your local Git, then you can push to GitHub later on. You will need to add your GitHub repo as a 'remote repository' in your Git setup.

They seem to have something for Eclipse users : http://eclipse.github.com/

Otherwise, if you are new to Git : http://git-scm.com/book

What is Git:

"Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency"

Git is a distributed peer-peer version control system. Each node in the network is a peer, storing entire repositories which can also act as a multi-node distributed back-ups. There is no specific concept of a central server although nodes can be head-less or 'bare', taking on a role similar to the central server in centralised version control systems.

What is GitHub:

"GitHub is a web-based Git repository hosting service, which offers all of the distributed revision control and source code management (SCM) functionality of Git as well as adding its own features."

Github provides access control and several collaboration features such as wikis, task management, and bug tracking and feature requests for every project.

You do not need GitHub to use Git.

GitHub (and any other local, remote or hosted system) can all be peers in the same distributed versioned repositories within a single project.

Github allows you to:

• Share your repositories with others.
• Access other user's repositories.
• Store remote copies of your repositories (github servers) as backup of your local copies.

Git — The version control tool that GitHub is built on top of.

GitHub — Our company and the name of our software. We build software and websites to help you interact with Git repositories in a nice way.

GitHub.com — The website you log into to view repositories online.

GitHub Desktop — An application that you can install on your computer to help you synchronize local code with GitHub.com.

source: https://guides.github.com/introduction/getting-your-project-on-github/

There are a number of obvious differences between Git and GitHub.

Git itself is really focused on the essential tasks of version control. It maintains a commit history, it allows you to reverse changes through reset and revert commands, and it allows you to share code with other developers through push and pull commands. I think those are the essential features every developer wants from a DVCS tool.

No Scope Creep with Git

But one thing about Git is that it is really just laser focused on source code control and nothing else. That's awesome, but it also means the tool lacks many features organizations want. For example, there is no built-in user management facilities to authenticate who is connecting and committing code. Integration with things like Jira or Jenkins are left up to developers to figure out through things like hooks. Basically, there are a load of places where features could be integrated. That's where organizations like GitHub and GitLab come in.

Additional GitHub Features

GitHub's primary 'value-add' is that it provides a cloud based platform for Git. That in itself is awesome. On top of that, GitHub also offers:

• simple task tracking
• a GitHub desktop app
• online file editing
• branch protection rules
• pull request features
• organizational tools
• interaction limits for hotheads
• emoji support!!! :octocat: :+1:

So GitHub really adds polish and refinement to an already popular DVCS tool.

Git and GitHub competitors

Sometimes when it comes to differentiating between Git and GitHub, I think it's good to look at who they compete against. Git competes on a plane with tools like Mercurial, Subversion and RTC, whereas GitHub is more in the SaaS space competing against cloud vendors such as GitLab and Atlassian's BitBucket.

No GitHub Required

One thing I always like to remind people of is that you don't need GitHub or GitLab or BitBucket to use Git. Git was released in what, 2005? GitHub didn't come on the scene until 2007 or 2008, so big organizations were doing distributed version control with Git long before the cloud hosting vendors came along. So Git is just fine on its own. It doesn't need a cloud hosting service to be effective. But at the same time, having a PaaS provider certainly doesn't hurt.

Working with GitHub Desktop

By the way, you mentioned the mismatch between the repositories in your GitHub account and the repos you have locally? That's understandable. Until you've connected and done a pull or a fetch, the local Git repo doesn't know about the remote GitHub repo. Having said that, GitHub provides a tool known as the GitHub desktop that allows you to connect to GitHub from a desktop client and easily load local Git repos to GitHub, or bring GitHub repos onto your local machine.

I'm not overly impressed by the tool, as once you know Git, these things aren't that hard to do in the Bash shell, but it's an option.

In simple way we can tell below are the difference between git and git hub and VSTS.

git: - Treat git as a engine/technology to achieve source version control to our project. Unlike TFS (again a centralized source version control ) git is distributed version control technology. That means git it actually does not mandate to have any server. Through git technology we can make our own local machine as a source code repository not required to have a centralized server always(in large scale it can have Microsoft server to push and keep our project source code). But with SVN and TFS kind version control, it is mandatory that a server be associated with it.

For example if I am a free-lance developer and I directly report to my client and there is no other developer involved, I need to keep version control of my code to roll back(any version) and commit my codes and I don't have budget to get a server and I don't have time to install and use other server in my machine as TFS server and TFS client. So, the optimal way is to install git engine and use my local machine as a repository for version controlling by git.

GitHub: - as I said previously git is a technology and used with some command / shell commands , ie git only doesn't have UI. GitHub is online product or online repository which uses git technology for their process and achieve version controls along with other functionalities like bug tracking,Project management, Support ticket management ..etc. In other words Git Hub is a wrapper build on git technology with a UI and other functionalities by other third party firm, it is actually a product owned by somebody or some group based on git technology , where as git is open source, and not marketable product.

VSTS : - VSTS is a Microsoft product for online repository keeping source version control which can be treated as an alternate to git hub. Since its of Microsoft , VSTS support both git technology and TFS(TFVC-team foundation version control). Because TFS is another old Microsoft product to achieve this version control.Gradually I assume VSTS will gradually dump TFS as git is the prominent technology in this area and it is open source.