Git has become a popular choice for source control as an alternative to the classical centralized source control approach. Originating in the open source world for use in development of the Linux kernel, it has since spread in the software development world to be used on a variety of platforms.

While nothing prevents one from installing the Git toolset on their Windows system, a few years ago, Microsoft decided to add native Git support to Visual Studio. Since its arrival in VS2012 Update 2, Microsoft has continued to refine their offering, and given Git a prominent role within Visual Studio.

The basic concept of Git is that it takes the approach of decentralized source control—rather than having a central server that serves as the sole repository, Git facilitates distributed repositories. In practice, this means that each developer can have a full copy of the repository on their local developer machine that contains the entire project history. Developers can perform...