Git and Subversion - the working directory is fundamentally different
One of the fundamental differences between Git and Subversion that I didn't understand at first and, IMHO, doesn't really get much coverage in the documentation is the way the 'working directory' is treated. Git is all about branching and it is indeed very good at that but what happens when you switch branches in Git is completely different to when you switch branches in Subversion. You could say that you never really "switch" branches in Subversion. You can create branches and checkout a branch in subversion: In subversion if you want to use a branch you typically 'check it out' to a new clean 'working directory'. This directory is a new place in your filesystem and you perform work on that branch in this new working directory. You can't easily 'switch' a working directory from one branch to another branch. With subversion if you are working on a number of different branches then you would typically have a number of different