Why Git

Git is the most popular distributed version control system (DVCS) today. Compared to centralized systems, DVCS have all information locally available. This gives you the following advantages:

• speed: no need to transfer a lot of information (e.g. log information) over a slow network just to see the file history
• network independence: you can work on your project and commit changes without having remote access to your central server (you can synchronize it later)

Git makes branching, merging and branch switching very easy and fast.

Why SmartGit

Git has very powerful concepts and commands, but getting started with it can be difficult due to its overwhelming number of features.

• SmartGit strongly focuses on ease of use. For example, you never need to enter the hard to remember, long SHA ID to identify a commit — instead you simply select the commit from a list.
• SmartGit contains all necessary functionality¹ to be used out of the box. No additional external tools like SSH client, file compare or file merge are required.

1. SmartGit only requires a Java Runtime Environment 1.5 or higher and the Git command line tools.