Version Control Systems (VCS)

Version Controlling

Didn't you ever struggle when you were trying to integrate everyone's files together while working on group projects with your colleagues.Was it easy for you all..??Is it worked smoothly once after  you merged your files..??I guess most of you will say Nooo.. just like me.

But there is a way that you can integrate your project in a proper manner without making files integration conflicts.

But How...??

Using a Version Control System easily you can avoid integration issues.

Now What is this Version Control System..??

Simply, version control system records the changes you make to your project's files , documents, programs, and other information stored as computer files over time. so that you can recall specific versions later.

This is what version control is about. It's really as simple as it sounds.

Do you know the amazing part of VCS...??

• It allows to revert files back to a previous state.
• Can revert the entire project back to a previous state.
•  Also can compare the changes over time.
• Can see who last modified something that might be causing a problem.

Popular examples for VCS

• Github
• Bitbucket
• GitLab
• Mercurial
• Bazaar

Following links are good interactive demos for learning git.

The fundamentals are found in [1] and advanced branching demo is in [2].

[1] https://try.github.io

[2] http://pcottle.github.io/learnGitBranching/

Distributed vs Centralized

There are many version control systems out there.Mainly we are divided version control systems into two groups.

1. Centralize

2. Distributed” (Decentralized)

First let's see what is the difference between Centralized and Distributed (Decentralized) version control systems.

Centralized version control systems are based on the idea that there is only a single “central” copy of the project  on a server and programmers will “commit” their changes to this central copy.

“Committing” a change simply means recording the change in the central system. Other programmers can then see this change. They can also pull down the change, and the version control tool will automatically update the contents of any files that were changed.Programmers no longer have to keep many copies of files on their hard drives manually, because the version control tool can talk to the central copy and retrieve any version they need

Distributed version control systems (DVCS) do not  rely on a central server to store all the versions of a project’s files. Instead, every developer “clones” a copy of a repository and has the full history of the project on their own hard drive. This copy (or “clone”) has all of the metadata of the original.

The most popular DVCS are Github , Bitbucket ,Mercurial and Bazaar.

I think you got a basic idea of what is version controlling and why we use version controlling..There are few terminologies we need to know when using a version control system for our project. From the provided link[3] below you can get familiar with those  terminologies.

[3] https://help.github.com/articles/github-glossary/