You may have heard of git or GitHub if you have researched or tried coding for WordPress. Developers can benefit greatly from these tools, but figuring out what they do and how they differ from one another can be difficult. Let’s learn more about Git and GitHub in this article.
Fortunately, once you know how git and GitHub work, you can use them to make your development process more efficient. You can even combine the two and make use of them together.
What is Git?
Git is a mature, actively maintained open-source project originally developed in 2005 by Linus Torvalds, the famous creator of the Linux operating system kernel. A staggering number of software projects rely on Git for version control, including commercial projects as well as open source.
Git is basically a free and open-source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.
What is GitHub?
GitHub is an online software development platform. It’s used for storing, tracking, and collaborating on software projects. It makes it easy for developers to share code files and collaborate with fellow developers on open-source and closed tasks or projects.
It is a place where over 94 million developers shape the future of software, together. Contribute to the open source community, and manage what we call Git repositories.
Git Vs GitHub
Although the two are closely related, Git is open-source software maintained by Linux, while Microsoft owns GitHub. Git is not the same as GitHub.
While Git is a tool that’s used to manage multiple versions of source code edits that are then transferred to files in a Git repository, GitHub serves as a location for uploading copies of a Git repository. So basically, GitHub is a hub or social platform that hosts the code and repositories.
Related: Here Are Ten Free and Open Source Alternatives to Figma
GitHub Pricing & Platform Options
GitHub has 3 pricing editions currently. Look at different pricing editions below and see what editions and features meet your budget and needs.
I am personally using the free version and it is available for free and forever without connecting any credit card or payment option. It has the following features;
- Unlimited public/ private repositories
- Automatic security and version updates
- 2000 CI/CD minutes/ month (free for public repositories)
- 500MB of Packages storage
- 15 GB Codespace Storage
- 120 Core-hours of codespace compute
- New issues & projects (in limited beta)
- Community support
- And exclusive add-ons; GitHub Copilot Access
GitHub is available on iOS, Android, Web, and Desktop. GitHub CLI is available for repositories hosted on GitHub.com and GitHub Enterprise Server 2.20+, and to install on macOS, Windows, and Linux. There is no official desktop version for Linux.
GitHub Alternatives
There are many GitHub alternatives and we already have an article on those. Some are open source with others available at a fee; You can check them out here.
Also Read: Best alternatives to GitHub to host your code
GitHub for Non-Devs
GitHub is a website designed for programmers to collaboratively build their code. But that doesn’t mean you need to be a programmer to use it! You can get started with collaborative version-tracking of your (non-programming) work without ever writing a line of code or using the command line.
You could upload your documents, images, and other important notes on GitHub for free as a non-developer. GitHub will treat the changes made to those documents the same way it does changes to code. It’s a super easy way to maintain version control on a document. We shall see how you can leverage GitHub as a non-programmer or developer in some upcoming articles.
Conclusion
GitHub is basically a code hosting platform for version control and collaboration. It lets you and others work together on projects from anywhere. We hope you have learned something and how you can get started with GitHub for free and forever!
