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Google has announced that in addition to supporting the Subversion and Mercurial version control systems, Google Code Project Hosting now supports Git.
Git is a popular distributed version control system (DVCS) like Mercurial, and it is used by many popular projects including the Linux kernel and Android.
In a July 25 blog post on the move, Google Git Engineer Dave Borowitz said developers will be able to “enjoy all the same great Google Project Hosting features, like project updates, advanced issue tracking, and an easy-to-use VCS-backed wiki-only now, you can do it with Git. You can also create an instant server-side clone of any existing Git repository by clicking the ‘Create a clone’ button on the project’s checkout page.”
Moreover, like Google’s Mercurial implementation, the new Git implementation stores object data in a custom data store built on Bigtable-Google’s distributed storage system for managing structured data that is designed to scale to a very large size. This provides users with efficient, scalable source code repositories with near-instantaneous replication to multiple data centers around the world, Borowitz said.
Also, Borowitz said to fit with Google’s existing Python-based system, the company’s new Git server implementation is powered in part by Dulwich. Dulwich is a pure-Python implementation of the Git file formats and protocols. The project is named after the village in which Mr. and Mrs. Git live in a Monty Python sketch.
Borowitz added that since Google’s initial announcement of Mercurial support, Git has grown significantly more popular and user-friendly. “And on the technical side, it has added an efficient -smart’ HTTP protocol that fits with Google’s HTTP-based infrastructure.”
For more information, including an introduction to Git and tips on converting existing Subversion and Mercurial repositories, see the new Git section of Google’s support wiki.