They are especially useful for DevOps teams since they help them to reduce development time and increase successful deployments. Version control software keeps track of every modification to the code in a special kind of database. If a mistake is made, developers can turn back the clock and compare earlier versions of the code to help fix the mistake while minimizing disruption to all team members.
For almost all software projects, the source code is like the crown jewels - a precious asset whose value must be protected. For most software teams, the source code is a repository of the invaluable knowledge and understanding about the problem domain that the developers have collected and refined through careful effort. Version control protects source code from both catastrophe and the casual degradation of human error and unintended consequences.
Software developers working in teams are continually writing new source code and changing existing source code. The code for a project, app or software component is typically organized in a folder structure or "file tree". One developer on the team may be working on a new feature while another developer fixes an unrelated bug by changing code, each developer may make their changes in several parts of the file tree.
Version control helps teams solve these kinds of problems, tracking every individual change by each contributor and helping prevent concurrent work from conflicting.
Changes made in one part of the software can be incompatible with those made by another developer working at the same time. This problem should be discovered and solved in an orderly manner without blocking the work of the rest of the team.
Further, in all software development, any change can introduce new bugs on its own and new software can't be trusted until it's tested. So testing and development proceed together until a new version is ready. Good version control software supports a developer's preferred workflow without imposing one particular way of working.
Ideally it also works on any platform, rather than dictate what operating system or tool chain developers must use. Great version control systems facilitate a smooth and continuous flow of changes to the code rather than the frustrating and clumsy mechanism of file locking - giving the green light to one developer at the expense of blocking the progress of others.
Software teams that do not use any form of version control often run into problems like not knowing which changes that have been made are available to users or the creation of incompatible changes between two unrelated pieces of work that must then be painstakingly untangled and reworked.
If you're a developer who has never used version control you may have added versions to your files, perhaps with suffixes like "final" or "latest" and then had to later deal with a new final version. Perhaps you've commented out code blocks because you want to disable certain functionality without deleting the code, fearing that there may be a use for it later. Version control is a way out of these problems.
Version control software is an essential part of the every-day of the modern software team's professional practices. In version control systems, you have the concept of a repository for your code.
A wealth of new shell commands get learned very quickly so that you can interact with this repository. Once you save your code to a file, you can then commit this to your project's repository. As you develop your code and commit your changes the repository develops a series of revisions. You can access any of these by checking out a revision. If you work alone it's unlikely that you'll be doing much checking out unless you lose your code files or want to work on a different machine.
In these cases you'll usually check out the latest revision of all files. Any changes I make are stored incrementally and I will always be able to step backwards to a project that worked as a whole.
I rarely use FTP to deploy now because I just checkout my code through ssh. Only the files I've changed are downloaded and if I need to reload on the server the terminal is already there. It's a google talk where Linus Torvalds makes an argument for using one version control system over another.
In doing so he explains how they work using concepts and then compares different ways of implementing them. You'll probably want something like subversion even if you're working by yourself so that you have a history of all your changes. You might want to see what a piece of code looked like once upon a time to remember why you made a change.
Having source control is also useful when you check in often. If you check in often, you'll always be in a state to roll back often too. Many times you could start going down one path to solve a problem and then realise it was the wrong path to go. Many times you could just keep barking down the wrong path and end up building a terrible solution - only because you didn't want to lose all your work.
By checking in often, the last point of "happiness" is not far away so even if you go down the wrong path you can always roll back and try again and make a more elegant and simple solution. Which is always a good thing so you can understand and maintain what you wrote in the future. It depends on the size of the project and how often you change your mind about parts of it.
For small projects where you're just getting something done in a linear fashion, version control is probably not going to be of much help though if you accidentally delete or corrupt a file without version control, you'll be crying. But a couple of weeks ago I met a friend who was writing an enormous hobby project on his own. He had ten or twenty copies of his code, with suffixes like "X1", "X2", "test", "faster" and so forth. If you've made more than two copies of your code, you need version control.
A good version control system lets you undo a change you made a while ago without undoing the stuff you did after making that change. It lets you see when certain changes were made. It lets you split your code into two "paths" e. It is I am encountering objections, at this relative late date, to using Git; objections I see some raising here.
This discussion has clarified greatly the imperative of using source control rather than simply making named back-up copies. One key point is source control use even where we've single developer projects. Nobody is perfect. You make mistakes. If you're exceptionally good and smart you're going to be developing more complex apps; but you're still gonna make some mistakes and this handles it. Geez oh Pete! I never use Linux but I think we all respect the great technical intelligence of Linus Torvalds.
He recognized the importance of source control and he made key contributions to the inception of Git. That's a summary point for all the reasons given here. Torvalds gets it: source control is very important: use source control. Thanks to all who've commented on this long running topic. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams?
Collectives on Stack Overflow. Learn more. Why should I use version control? Asked 12 years, 2 months ago. Active 2 years, 1 month ago. Viewed 58k times. Improve this question. Robert Harvey k 44 44 gold badges silver badges bronze badges.
JasonDavis JasonDavis It is a strange phenomenon that many developers usually early in their careers hold this view, and it's only when you force them to use source-control that the benefits start to unravel in their heads. Hands up who doesn't share Martinho's shame. Somebody show TimEckel a bisection, where version control magically points you at a three line change from three months ago and says "the bug was introduced here. TimEckel , you are still using a version control, another type with less features.
Show 8 more comments. Active Oldest Votes. Have you ever: Made a change to code, realised it was a mistake and wanted to revert back? Lost code or had a backup that was too old? Had to maintain multiple versions of a product? Wanted to see the difference between two or more versions of your code? Version control would track this change. But assessing the impact of the change would fall on the reviewers and approvers of the new blueprints.
Configuration management would automatically flag issues. If moving the panel would put it in the way of the water line, the system can warn you of this. Typically, configuration management systems are only needed for very large and complex projects with many interrelated parts, such as construction design projects.
The risk of working from the wrong file is extremely high when you have multiple revisions and no effective means of controlling versions. What happens if someone edits, changes, or deletes a document in error?
File versioning tools not only make it clear which file is the latest version but also allow you to go back and restore previous versions. When your project management software includes version control functionality, you can centralize all of your important project files in one place. You can also link version changes to your proofing and approval cycle. If someone adds a new version of an attachment to a task, folder, or project, the review process will automatically reset.
This functionality ensures that you never accidentally provide a client with an unreviewed version of a file. Whenever a new version of a file is added, the assigned reviewers and approvers will automatically see the latest version when they review it.
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