Which version control system should I use for a Rails app: Git or SVN?
Here are some factors to consider:
Edit: Thanks for the responses so far. It seems like Git is slightly more favoured. Does it have any SSH functionality?
I'd say go for Git. Mostly because I'm biased, but also because you don't need to setup any sort of server with Git, you just git init and go. Git is generally just better, it provides more flexibility and power than SVN does.
Edit: This is a bit of a dupe of Why is Git better than Subversion, or at least relevant.
Edit2: Git has 3 primary methods of communication, the Git protocol, SSH and HTTP. Github uses SSH for "push access", e.g., [email protected]/user/repo.git.
As a single developer who is already familar with SVN - if you want to be as productive as possible use SVN.
If on the other hand you really want to learn GIT and can afford a bit more time to learn it, use GIT.
Since you're solo and want to put it on a remote location: SVN, but you should learn/use Git as well. You could also combine the two, use Git locally and SVN for the remote..
It's probably a good idea to use some sort of version control. It's also probably a good idea to have remote backups of your code.
Git and svn are both good version control solutions and are both popular within the Ruby/Rails community.
If you were in a distributed development group I'd suggest git might be more appropriate since one of its specific design goals was for that situation.
If you were on Windows, I'd hint that TortoiseSVN probably provides a less challenging experience than, say, msysGit.
Mostly, though they both seem to do a similar job and do it well.
If you specifically want to learn a new source control system while building your project, go for git. Or if you intend spending a lot of time in, for example, edge Rails, which lives at Github, again might as well go for git.
Otherwise I'd say you should stick to svn.
Use Git, if for no other reason than that you can use it almost exactly like SVN (including remote management of multiple branches over SSH) and it's much, much faster and more reliable. Local checkins and branches, distributed version control, revision history management, etc. are only side benefits.
In my experience the only reasons to prefer SVN over Git are: a legacy SVN repository, or the requirement to use Windows on the client.
I'd say there's no particular difference.
Both systems are just tools, and both of them will provide you with with the functionality you're looking for. If there's no other parameters to consider, I'd say go with SVN as you already know it and you don't need time to learn it.
If you have a day to learn Git, then learn Git. It has all the functionality that svn has, plus cheap branching/merging, local commits, and the option of distributed development.
It is easy to work with remote repositories. If you're just looking for some kind of public hosting, then you might want to look at Github, which has free public hosting, good Ruby integration, and many pretty graphs.
I'd add one follow-up question: are you working on this alone? The GUI tool support for Git is generally lagging that of Subversion, so if that is or might become a consideration, then I would opt for Subversion.
For example, if your designers use Adobe CS4, they can use its built-in Subversion support (and you don't have to teach them Git). So consider the current and future composition of your team as a factor in your decision-making.
I used to love git, but have recently switched to mercurial. It has exactly the same syntax as git, but is written in python, and has lots of nice bells and whistles out of the box, like a web server for visual tracking of commits.
I know that this can be set up for git using gitweb for example, but it requires a bit of work.
I would have replied in comments but I can't, yet.
For those who don't know, Git work with Windows. If you don't like the msys's version, TortoiseGit is already usable.