来自SourceGear的Eric Sink写了一系列关于分布式和非分布式版本控制系统之间区别的文章。他比较了最流行的版本控制系统的优缺点。非常有趣的读物。 文章可以在他的博客www.ericsink.com上找到:

阅读差异 Git是版本控制工具中的C Git缺乏对不变性和DVCS最佳实践的尊重 DVCS和dag，第1部分 DVCS和dag，第2部分 DVCS和Bug跟踪 合并历史，dag和Darcs Git为什么这么快? Mercurial, Subversion和Wesley Snipes

Easy Git有一个很好的页面，比较了Git和SVN的实际使用情况，这将让你了解Git可以做什么(或更容易做什么)。(从技术上讲，这是基于Easy Git的，它是Git之上的轻量级包装器。)

“为什么Git比X好”概述了Git相对于其他scm的各种优缺点。

简要:

Git tracks content rather than files Branches are lightweight and merging is easy, and I mean really easy. It's distributed, basically every repository is a branch. It's much easier to develop concurrently and collaboratively than with Subversion, in my opinion. It also makes offline development possible. It doesn't impose any workflow, as seen on the above linked website, there are many workflows possible with Git. A Subversion-style workflow is easily mimicked. Git repositories are much smaller in file size than Subversion repositories. There's only one ".git" directory, as opposed to dozens of ".svn" repositories (note Subversion 1.7 and higher now uses a single directory like Git.) The staging area is awesome, it allows you to see the changes you will commit, commit partial changes and do various other stuff. Stashing is invaluable when you do "chaotic" development, or simply want to fix a bug while you're still working on something else (on a different branch). You can rewrite history, which is great for preparing patch sets and fixing your mistakes (before you publish the commits) … and a lot more.

有一些缺点:

There aren't many good GUIs for it yet. It's new and Subversion has been around for a lot longer, so this is natural as there are a few interfaces in development. Some good ones include TortoiseGit and GitHub for Mac. Partial checkouts/clones of repositories are not possible at the moment (I read that it's in development). However, there is submodule support. Git 1.7+ supports sparse checkouts. It might be harder to learn, even though I did not find this to be the case (about a year ago). Git has recently improved its interface and is quite user friendly.

在最简单的用法中，Subversion和Git是差不多的。两者之间没有太大区别:

svn checkout svn://foo.com/bar bar
cd bar
# edit
svn commit -m "foo"

and

git clone git@github.com:foo/bar.git
cd bar
# edit
git commit -a -m "foo"
git push

Git真正的亮点在于分支和与其他人一起工作。

它是分布的。基准测试表明，它的速度要快得多(考虑到它的分布式性质，像diffs和log这样的操作都是本地的，所以在这种情况下，它当然要快得多)，而且工作文件夹也更小(这仍然让我大吃一惊)。

当您使用subversion或任何其他客户端/服务器版本控制系统时，您实际上是通过签出版本在您的机器上创建工作副本。这代表了存储库外观的时间快照。通过更新更新工作副本，通过提交更新存储库。

使用分布式版本控制，您没有快照，而是拥有整个代码库。想要一个3个月大的版本吗?没问题，3个月前的版本还在你的电脑上。这不仅意味着速度更快，而且如果您与中央服务器断开连接，您仍然可以执行许多您习惯的操作。换句话说，您不仅拥有给定修订的快照，而且拥有整个代码库。

您可能认为Git会占用大量硬盘空间，但从我看到的几个基准测试来看，它实际上占用的空间更少。不要问我怎么做。我的意思是，它是由莱纳斯构建的，我猜他对文件系统略知一二。

首先，并发版本控制似乎是一个很容易解决的问题。一点也不。无论如何……

SVN非常不直观。Git更糟糕。这可能是因为开发人员喜欢并发版本控制这样的难题，他们对制作一个好的UI没有多大兴趣。[/ sarcastic-speculation]

SVN supporters think they don't need a distributed version-control system. I thought that too. But now that we use Git exclusively, I'm a believer. Now version control works for me AND the team/project instead of just working for the project. When I need a branch, I branch. Sometimes it's a branch that has a corresponding branch on the server, and sometimes it does not. Not to mention all the other advantages that I'll have to go study up on (thanks in part to the arcane and absurd lack of UI that is a modern version control system).

这里所有的答案都是意料之中的，以程序员为中心，但是如果你的公司在源代码之外使用修订控制会发生什么呢?有很多文档不是源代码，它们受益于版本控制，应该与代码接近，而不是在另一个CMS中。大多数程序员都不是孤立地工作——我们作为团队的一部分为公司工作。

考虑到这一点，比较Subversion和git在客户端工具和培训方面的易用性。我看不出有哪一种分布式修订控制系统会更容易使用或向非程序员解释。我很乐意被证明是错误的，因为这样我就可以评估git，并希望它能够被那些需要版本控制的人(而不是程序员)接受。

即便如此，如果管理层问我为什么我们应该从集中式版本控制系统转向分布式版本控制系统，我也很难给出一个诚实的答案，因为我们不需要它。

Disclaimer: I became interested in Subversion early on (around v0.29) so obviously I'm biased, but the companies I've worked for since that time are benefiting from my enthusiasm because I've encouraged and supported its use. I suspect this is how it happens with most software companies. With so many programmers jumping on the git bandwagon, I wonder how many companies are going to miss out on the benefits of using version control outside of source code? Even if you have separate systems for different teams, you're missing out on some of the benefits, such as (unified) issue tracking integration, whilst increasing maintenance, hardware and training requirements.