Local branches are very helpful if you are working on different features at the same time but want to keep them apart. An example: it happens all the time that I am working on some feature and than I have to put my current work aside to work on a high priority issue. Once this issue is solved, I need to commit the changes and usually do a deploy of the web application so that the problem is solved as soon as possible. With Subversion, I sometimes commit files that were part of the unfinished feature I was working on before I started on the high priority issue. If I am not careful and deploy those files, unfinished work will be put into production and this can go horribly wrong, like every page request returning a 500-error of our high traffic site .

Using git, I can put my current work aside easily by using git stash. When I am finished with the high priority issue, I can revert to my previous work with git stash apply.

Another option: branching the project (using git branch feature) if the feature I am working on is invasive and than switch branches for high priority issues using git checkout master. I can go back to the feature branch with git checkout feature, followed by git merge master to merge back the changes I just made in the master branch. Branching and merging is very fast in git and merging is not the PITA like it is in Subversion.

However, our main code repository will probably remain in SVN for now. Luckily for me, I can use git-svn locally to profit from these advantages. I found an informative page on installing and getting started with git-svn on OSX. If you know Subversion, this page is helpful to translate Subversion commandos to their git alternatives.