Version Control on Mac

Question

I am a student and my uses of source control are mostly academic (HW assignments, 2-4 person projects and so on).
Until now I have been using Subversion hosted in google code, and used the eclipse plugin to manage my repository.

Recently I heard of git, which to my understanding needs to be synced between each two collaborates each time, and something called Mercurial.
So basically my question has 3 parts:
Which source control system is recommended and what benefits does git offer? Is it worth learning it?
Which is a good free host that will support this system?
What is the best tool to manage my repository? Is using the command line better in any way than the Eclipse plugin? or is there some other software that is recommended?

If my question is to vague please comment and I'll be glad to revise it.

Answer 1

Git and Mercurial are distrubuted SCMs, meaning there is not central server (in practice people agree on one, but the infrastructure doesn't require it).

It is the way SCMs are going, so yes, worth learning.

For git hosting look at github, for Mercurial, look at Kiln (not free), though there are many free ones as well.

As for asking if command line is better than a plugin/GUI? It depends on how you like to work.

Answer 2

• github is a good free repository for git.
• bitbucket is a good free repository for mercurial.

I prefer tooling that integrates with my IDE so I recommend that route but many people rave about using the command line for git and how awesome it is. I think they're just more hard core than I want to be.

git and mercurial are similar enough to each other that it makes very little difference which one you choose especially if you are new to DVCS. Choose the one that has tools that work well with your setup.