Git - My Favorite Feature

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I've been using Git for some months now. Even though it isn't natively supported in any of my tools, and the plugins are a bit buggy, it just really doesn't matter. And the reason is pretty simple.

Since Git considers content, and not paths, you can re-arrange your directory structure at will, and Git will pickup the new paths by comparing file contents.

This enables a number of freedoms.

One, you can refactor your project layout without having to broker the file moves and renames through a tool.

Two, being freed from a tool to broker these events, IDEs and tools don't really need to support Git directly.

So, I can refactor through IntelliJ, Finder, bash, or TextMate interchangeably.

Compare this to SVN or Perforce. Both tools must be involved any any file path operations, else your in for a bit of pain.

Of course, without the IDE Git support, I miss the inline diffs and change history features. And that is a bit of a drag.

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