Version Control
Version Control
- Keeping track of versions and changes
- Know who changed what
- Handle conflicting changes
Similar to:
- Saving files with different names
- But automatic
- And better for searching
- Each "version" can have comments and information
- VC can handle multiple files at once
- Online document sharing
- But VC is not simultaneous, user specifies when to share
- This makes sense for code which must be "complete" before sharing
Good for:
- Text files
- Code files
- Small program resources (that don't change often)
- e.g. program icon files
Bad for:
- Binary formats
- e.g. Word documents, PDF
- Any small change in a binary file will usually cause the whole file to be marked as changed, which can lead to a very large and inefficient repsotory
- Large data files
- Specially if they change often or significantly
Concepts
- Repository
- The "place" where the files are stored
- Often a web address from which the files can be accessed
- Often abbreviated as "repo"
- Client software
- VC requires special software to download and upload changes
More concepts
- Fork
- A new independent copy of a repository
- Branch
- An independent specific "version" of a repo, usually to implement specific functionality (before actually have the other collaborators use it by default)
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More Concepts
- Merge
- Bring the changes from others together with your own
- Conflict
- What happens when you and someone else have modified some file in the same place
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Version control systems
- CVS (Concurrent Version System)
- SVN (SubVersioN)
- Git
- Many others:
- Bazaar, Mercurial, etc.
Distributed VC
- More common one today
- Does not rely on a central server
- There can be one, but it doesn't have more "power" than any of the other peers
- All copies of the repository are (almost) identical.
- They all have all versions
- And they can have all branches (although under certain circumstances they don't...)
Git commands
- Commit
- Set a revision
- The changes are stored as a single "unit"
- Done only on the local repo
- Push/Pull
- Send/receive changes from a remote repo
Websites offering git hosting
www.github.com
www.bitbucket.com
many others...
Version Control
By mantaraya36
Version Control
- 1,055