Difference Between GitHub and SVN

Github is a platform that gives cloud-based service and provides software developers to store and manage their code, as well as track and modify any changes to their code. Github works with the help of two principles which are as follows:

• Version Control
• Git

Version control helps the software developers to track and modify any change within their code. The software developers modify the changes safely through branching & merging. In branching, a developer duplicates(clones) the part of source code which he/she wants to change, without affecting the rest of the principal project. And in Merging, after changes are made to the part of the source code, then it merges with the principal code to make it official.

Whereas, Git is an open-source distributed version control, which means the entire codebase is available in every developer computer for easy branching and merging.

Therefore, GitHub is an open-source distributed platform that provides developers to store and manage their project’s code.

SVN, or we can call Subversion, is one of many version control options available today. Actually, it is a centralized version control system. It is licensed under Apache. SVN is also used to manage and track changes to code.

SVN used to be one of the popular version control systems but its popularity is warning, although it is managed today by a small number of communities. SVN manages its files, and changes are made to them over time. This allows us to recover older versions of the data, or let examine the history of the data changed. Many people think of SVN as a sort of  ” time machine “.

SVN can operate through networks, which allows it to be used by people on different computers.  

With a centralized system, all files and history are stored in a central repository. Developers can commit their work directly to that central server repository. However, working on one central server means if there is a single point of failure and an error occurs, it can destroy all builds.

SVN creates branches as a directory inside a repository, which stores information in the form of a file system tree, with having:

• Trunk:  It is the hub that acts as a base where all changes are made from.
• Branch: This is where you create new code and features.
• Tags: Marking your code with tags make it easy to review and if necessary can revert your code

Finally, SVN is considered to be easy to learn. Certainly, the learning curve is lower compared to GitHub.

Difference between Github and SVN:

S.NO.	GITHUB	SVN
1.	Github is a distributed version control system.	SVN is a centralized version control system.
2.	It is available offline and is safe to work, even if the connection is lost.	SVN connection is required for code commitment.
3.	The cloning feature is available in Github.	The cloning feature is not available.
4.	Branching and merging support is available.	Merging support is not available in SVN.
5.	It has a limited capacity to handle large binary files.	SVN can handle large binary files in addition to code.
6.	It is more faster and lightweight than SVN.	It is not that much faster and lightweight as compared to Git.
7.	Github stored content as metadata.	SVN stores content as files.
8.	In Github, changes are tracked at the repository level.	While in SVN changes are tracked at the file level.
9.	Github has more content protection than SVN.	SVN’s content is less secure than GitHub.
10.	In GitHub, we create only the .git directory.	In SVN, we create a . an SVN directory in each folder.
11.	In Github, there is no feature like global revision number which can be used for snapshots of the source code.	In SVN it has a global revision number that is used for snapshots of the source code.
12.	The learning curve is more in the case of Github as it uses a lot of commands.	The learning curve is significantly less here as compared to Github.

Both the systems GitHub & SVN are immensely used by developers, While Git is preferred by many because of its vast majority of situations. Although SVN may be easier to learn because of its simpler user interface (UI). Therefore, the system can be chosen as per the user’s need and its work availability.