What does version control do




















Centralized version control stores changes in a single server. A distributed version control system involves cloning a Git repository. Software is developed to solve a user problem. Increasingly, these solutions have many different forms e. As organizations accelerate delivery of their software solutions through DevOps, controlling and managing different versions of application artifacts - from code to configuration and from design to deployment - becomes increasingly difficult.

Velocity without robust version control and traceability is like driving a car without a seatbelt. Version control facilitates coordination, sharing, and collaboration across the entire software development team. Version control software enables teams to work in distributed and asynchronous environments, manage changes and versions of code and artifacts, and resolve merge conflicts and related anomalies.

Understand and spark team collaboration to foster greater release build and release patterns. There are several source code management options that can help your team streamline development. SVN is a widely adopted centralized version control system. Mercurial is a distributed version control system that offers simple branching and merging capabilities. The system enables rapid scaling and collaborative development, with an intuitive interface. The flexible command line interface enables users to begin using the system immediately.

Version control coordinates all changes in a software project, effectively tracking changes to source files, designs, and all digital assets required for a project and related metadata. Projects without version control and collaboration can easily devolve into a tangled mess of different versions of project files, hindering the ability of any software development team to deliver value.

Pretty nifty, eh? In SVN, we diff two revisions of a file like this:. For example, we can create a branch for new, experimental ideas for our list: crazy things like Rice or Eggo waffles. Depending on the version control system, creating a branch copy may change the revision number.

Now that we have a branch, we can change our code and work out the kinks. Rice is a safe bet. And our branch history is under version control. Branching sounds simple, right? How would we do this? Diff r6 and r7 and apply that to the main line? We only want to apply the changes that happened in the branch! That means we diff r5 and r6, and apply that to the main trunk:.

Main may have had other changes, which is ok — we just want to insert the Rice feature. This command diffs r5-r6 in the experimental branch and applies it to the current location. Many times, the VCS can automatically merge changes to different parts of a file. A few approaches:. Conflicts are infrequent but can be a pain. Usually I update to the latest and re-apply my changes.

Who would have thought a version control system would be Web 2. Many systems let you tag label any revision for easy reference. In Subversion, tags are just branches that you agree not to edit; they are around for posterity, so you can see exactly what your version 1.

The Media Player team makes version 11 in their own branch. This is a reverse integration , from the branch to the trunk. The IE team can do the same thing. Later, the Media Player team can pick up the latest code from other teams, like IE. In this case, Media Player forward integrates and gets the latest patches from main into their branch. Aye aye. This arrangement lets changes percolate throughout the branches, while keeping new code out of the main line.

Cool, eh? But you get the idea: branches help manage complexity. Now you know the basics of how one of the largest software projects is organized. Learn Right, Not Rote. Home Articles Popular Calculus.

Feedback Contact About Newsletter. Hopefully they relabel the file after they save it. Files are saved as they are edited, and you can jump to any moment in time. Need that file as it was on Feb 23, ? No problem. Lets people share files and stay up-to-date with the latest version. Short-term undo. Monkeying with a file and messed it up?

Long-term undo. Sometimes we mess up bad. Suppose you made a change a year ago, and it had a bug. In other words, git pull does not follow the description above, and git push and git pull commands are not symmetric.

A version control system lets multiple users simultaneously edit their own copies of a project. Usually, the version control system is able to merge simultaneous changes by two different users: for each line, the final version is the original version if neither user edited it, or is the edited version if one of the users edited it. A conflict occurs when two different users make simultaneous, different changes to the same line of a file. In this case, the version control system cannot automatically decide which of the two edits to use or a combination of them, or neither!

Manual intervention is required to resolve the conflict. Change 1 and Change 2 are considered simultaneous if:. In a distributed version control system, there is an explicit operation, called merge , that combines simultaneous edits by two different users. Sometimes merge completes automatically, but if there is a conflict, merge requests help from the user by running a merge tool. In centralized version control, merging happens implicitly every time you do update.

It is better to avoid a conflict than to resolve it later. The best practices below give ways to avoid conflicts, such as that teammates should frequently share their changes with one another. Conflicts are bound to arise despite your best efforts. It's smart to practice conflict resolution ahead of time, rather than when you are frazzled by a conflict in a real project.

You can do so in this tutorial about Git conflict resolution. Recall that update changes the working copy by applying any edits that appear in the repository but have not yet been applied to the working copy. In a centralized version control system, you can update for example, svn update at any moment, even if you have locally-uncommitted changes.

The version control system merges your uncompleted changes in the working copy with the ones in the repository. This may force you to resolve conflicts. It also loses the exact set of edits you had made, since afterward you only have the combined version. The implicit merging that a centralized version control system performs when you update is a common source of confusion and mistakes. In a distributed version control system, if you have uncommitted changes in your working copy, then you cannot run update or other commands like git pull or hg fetch that themselves invoke update.

The reason is that it would be confusing and error-prone for the version control system to try to apply edits, when you are in the middle of editing. You will receive an error message such as. Before you are allowed to update , you must first commit any changes that you have made you should continue editing until they are logically complete first, of course. Now, your repository database contains simultaneous edits — the ones you just made, and the ones that were already there and you were trying to apply to your working copy by running update.

You need to merge these two sets of edits, then commit the result. In Mercurial, you will typically just run hg fetch , which performs the merge and commit for you.

The reason you need the commit is that merging is an operation that gets recorded by the version control system, in order to record any choices that you made during merging. In this way, the version control system contains a complete history and clearly records the difference between you making your edits and you merging simultaneous work. These best practices do not cover obscure or complex situations. Once you have mastered these practices, you can find more tips and tricks elsewhere on the Internet.

It only takes a moment to write a good commit message. This is useful when someone is examining the change, because it indicates the purpose of the change. This is useful when someone is looking for changes related to a given concept, because they can search through the commit messages. Each commit should have a single purpose and should completely implement that purpose. This makes it easier to locate the changes related to some particular feature or bug fix, to see them all in one place, to undo them, to determine the changes that are responsible for buggy behavior, etc.

The utility of the version control history is compromised if one commit contains code that serves multiple purposes, or if code for a particular purpose is spread across multiple different commits. During the course of one task, you may notice another issue and want to fix it too. You may need to commit one file at a time — the commit command of every version control system supports this. If a single file contains changes that serve multiple purposes, you may need to save your all your edits, then re-introduce them in logical chunks, committing as you go.

Here is a low-tech way to do this; each version control system also has more sophisticated mechanisms to support this common operation. Sometimes it is too burdensome to separate every change into its own commit.

However, aiming for and often achieving this goal will serve you well in the longer term. As a rule, I do not run git commit -a or hg commit or svn commit without supplying specific files to commit. If you supply no file names, then these commands commit every changed file. You may have changes you did not intend to make permanent such as temporary debugging changes ; even if not, this creates a single commit with multiple purposes.

When I want to commit my changes, to avoid accidentally committing more than I intended, I always run the following commands:. Work with the most up-to-date version of the files as possible. That means that you should run git pull , git pull -r , hg fetch , or svn update very frequently. I do this every day, on each of over projects that I am involved with.



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