What is the difference between Git and GitHub?

GitHub a version-control system authored by Finnish-American, software developer, [Linus Torvalds] (https://www.internethalloffame.org/inductee/linus-torvalds/), was created for Linux (also created by Torvalds when he was 21 and living with his mother in Helsinki). GitHub, the system which was created to manage all the variations and updates of a codebase, has now been purchased by Microsoft.

Git is a tool that tracks changes to source code, and it’s very basic. That’s what it does. It tracks changes to any file actually, but it’s mostly used for source code files. GitHub is where Git versions are stored - a hub for Git.

Git official documentation

Note When I refer to Git, this refers to the source code tracking tool, whereas git, is the series of commands and instructions used to track these changes in Git.

Git isn’t the only version control tool around, even though it’s the most popular one. Other workflow tools are Gitlab and BitBucket.

GitHub is the hub where all code is stored, reviewed. It is a public hosting site that is free for developers to host versions of their code. Repositories are created in GitHub for personal side projects and for commercial organisations to maintain their code base.

Further Reading

As these two workflows are different, it is useful to see how Git and GitHub work so fully understand the differences between Git and GitHub.

  • Understanding the Git workflow Git works on a tree-structure which GitHub follows.

  • Understanding the GitHub flow the difference is that GitHub is a distributed version control system and the workflow reflects the multiple branches and how they work up to the main trunk of the Git tree structure.

    Official Git Tutorials

Git is neither easy to understand or master so use a search engine to find answers if you are stuck. Git also has an official tutorials section and YouTube is another great resource if you follow best with video tutorials.