What are the best version control systems?

Options
Considered

379

User
Recs.

Aug 6, 2019

Last
Updated

Here’s the Deal

The Best 1 of 14 OptionsWhy?

Best version control systems	Price	Last Updated
95 Git	Free	Jun 3, 2019
85 Mercurial	Free	Jun 1, 2019
62 Fossil	-	Aug 6, 2019
-- Darcs	-	Jun 28, 2018
-- Pijul	-	Nov 20, 2018

See Full List

Git

Top Pro

Free and open source

Git is open source and completely free to use. See More

Top Con

Commands too close to implementation details and strange documentation

Git really suffers from the lack of abstraction made during its conception. Just as a proof, a generator of git-like man pages has been created to celebrate that weirdness. That said, the documentation is getting better and better; even so, you must grasp the internals (=implementation details) to really make full use of git. See More

Capuccino 's Experience

Based out of the need of Linus Torvalds himself for Linux, Git has proven to be instrumental for the Open Source movement. Undoubtedly fast, decentralized, and small, it's advantages made it the most used VCS in the industry, thanks to GitHub and a couple of providers. See More

Top Pro

Fast

With Git, nearly all operations are performed locally, giving it a huge speed advantage over centralized systems that constantly have to communicate with a remote server. In addition, Git uses delta encoding to only transmit the changed pieces of files across the network, saving time in large repos. See More

Top Con

Steep learning curve

The large number of commands and functions that Git provides can be discouraging for beginners. Learning how Git works can be a difficult concept to grasp at first. See More

Elias Van Ootegem's Experience

Let's be honest: Git has quickly become the industry standard when it comes to VCS's. Though not perfect (nothing is), git is the best for well over 90% of people. As long as you're not tracking too many non-text files, git is blazingly fast, reliable, and easy to use for collaborative projects. See More

Top Pro

Decentralized

Doesn't require access to a central repository, because each checkout is a full repository by itself. See More

Top Con

Submodules (linking repositories to one another) are a mess

Submodules are very difficult to work with effectively, and are limited to including an entire repository. See More

David Brown's Experience

I've used Git for everything since 2013. The biggest driving force is the market dominance in that GitHub is where the majority of open source happens. The largest platforms besides GitHub like Git lab and BitBucket either exclusively or primarily use Git. This dominance brings with it a wealth of fantastic documentation. See More

Top Pro

Flexible and powerful

Git is easy for the beginner and powerful for the professional who wants nothing more with less. it's a VCS that adapts with its user. See More

Top Con

File locking issues on Windows

Due to the Windows file system, e.g. a git gc (garbage collect) process sometimes cannot complete because Windows is locking files that are in use so that they cannot be deleted. This often occurs when an IDE is monitoring a repository during such a process. See More

davidak's Experience

The standard now. See More

Top Pro

Used by many open source programmers

Top Con

Slow on Windows

Though it definitely has improved in recent versions, Git on Windows is still slower than on Unix-based operating systems. That said, almost everything is slower on Windows than the equivalent on a Unix based os. And also, it is still quick enough and (with most operations) quicker than other SCMs. See More

VivaciousDespoina's Experience

I use git because that's what most everybody I collaborate with uses, and that's what most of the open source world is using. I dont actually like it though. Consulting the documentation and searching Stack Overflow etc. is an integral part of weekly experience, "how do I do X in git?". In the course of time I'll probably know how to use git and not much of anything else, I dont think of that as a win though. Git won the open source developer mindshare because of GitHub, not because of git. See More

Top Pro

Offline commits

Can commit changes offline and push changes to repository when you get back online. Great for working on the move and keeping a history available. See More

Top Con

Poor handling of binary data

Binary files (images, music... etc) are not handled so efficiently when there are many versions, since each version must be stored locally (which is unavoidable with distributed version management). nevertheless it is an issue. However, there is a git extension available (git LFS) that addresses this issue. See More

hari prasad's Experience

I have been working with git for more than 5+ years. It is a very great tool for versioning. See More

Top Pro

Many places to host your code

Top Con

Windows users are somehow treated as 2nd class citizens

The core developers seem not to take care much about the Windows platform, maybe because of religious reasons? See More

Top Pro

Has a sane & manageable model for branching/merging

Unlike SVN, git branches are lightweight, local by default, and intended to be used frequently. See More

Top Con

Binaries often are not offered at the same time a source release is published

For example, the latest macOS binary bundle was released weeks after the Windows bundle. See More

Top Pro

Data assurance

All git commits are checksummed and retrieved by its checksum, ensuring data integrity. See More

Top Con

It's unclear whether tags are pushed or point to a different commit

In contrast to branches, tags don't track remote tags, so it is not possible to judge from the locally available data whether a tag exists in a remote repository or points to the same commit as a tag in the remote repository. See More

Top Pro

Good documentation

Git documentation covers everything from revision control system basics to Git specific features in a short and clear way. See More

Top Pro

History rewrite

Git allows you the ability to edit your commit history. For example: if you're making a PR and you have a bunch of poorly organized commits, or lazy commit messages, or commits that aren't broken up properly then it's very useful. See More

Top Pro

Ref log

The ref log is one of the greatest (not commonly known) features of git. With it you can: Undo almost every history changing operation (including git reset or git rebase or even undo an undo) Compare results of an operation with the state before that operation Revive accidentally lost branches See per branch/ref what operations are executed upon them Because of this you never have to worry whether a command destroys your (committed) data or history. You can always try freely and go back if it's not to your likings. See More

Top Pro

Simple storage model

Gits storage model is quite simple. Once you understand it, git's sometimes hard to grasp CLI methods become clearer. Once you know the power of the CLI, you can do anything with it. This is also one of the reasons why data corruption is rare, easy to check and usually easy to fix. See More

Top Pro

Handles larger files

Git can handle very larger files which are more than 1 GB. See More

Top Pro

Ability to commit just parts of the local files using the Index

And thus allows to create clean commits even if the local files contain different modifications. See More

Top Pro

Great CLI

The CLI is the most powerful frontend of Git, due to it's subcommand-oriented design, it's reliable and gets you to know more about what's the purpose of each command. See More

See All

13 Other Options Considered

Mercurial

Top Pro

Easy to use

Mercurial is a more intuitive option than many of its competitors. The documentation is well organized and easy for beginners to read & understand. See More

Top Con