Version Control
Version control, also called Source control, allows you to track and
manage all of the changes to your code.
Why Use Version Control?
Multiple people could work on the same project simultaneously.
Serves simultaneously as a repository, project narrative,
communication medium, and team and product management tool.
Records all changes in a log
Allows team members to work concurrently and provides the
facility to merge that work back together.
Traces each change made to the software.
Data is transitory and can be lost easily.
What is Version Control System?
Also known as a source code manager (SCM) or a revision control
system (RCS), it is a system that keeps track of changes to a file or set
of files and in case of any problems, lets you go back in history,
comparing changes over time, and easily revert to a working state of
your source code. SVN, Mercurial, and the massively popular Git are
popular version control systems for developers. All of these are free and
open-source.
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With distributed version control systems like Git, you would have your
source code stored on a remote repository like GitHub and also a local
repository stored on your computer.
You will learn more about remote and local repositories in the next few
chapters. Still, one of the main points for the moment is that your
source code would be stored on a remote repository, so in case that
something goes wrong with your laptop, you would not lose all of your
changes, but they will be safely stored on GitHub.
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