While we start to learn coding one term we hear a lot about is git and github and importance of version control. In this blog post i try to illustrate why version control is important in the industry.
What is a version control ?
Version control is a system that records changes to a file or set of files over time so that you can recall specific versions later. In simple terms when multiple people work on a code/file it helps you track all the changes made to that code/file and by whom it was made, it also allows you to move back to a older version in case you break the code.
Types of version control.
Local Version Control Systems.
Local version control system maintains track of files within the local system. This approach is very common and simple. This type is also error prone which means the chances of accidentally writing to the wrong file is higher.
Centralized Version Control Systems.
In this approach, all the changes in the files are tracked under the centralized server. The centralized server includes all the information of versioned files, and list of clients that check out files from that central place.This helped with collaboration among developers on different machines but its downside was the single point of failure that the centralized repository represents if it goes down during that period collaboration and saving versioned changes is not possible.
Distributed Version Control Systems.
In this system clients don’t just check out the latest snapshot of the files; rather, they fully mirror the repository, including its full history. Thus, if any server dies, and these systems were collaborating via that server, any of the client repositories can be copied back up to the server to restore it. Every clone is really a full backup of all the data.
Popular version control systems.
1) SVN
Apache Subversion and is a popular version control system tool. It is a centralized version control system and is system distributed and collaborated with open source license.
2)Mercurial
Is free and open source distributed revision control system.This subversion control is well suited to scripting tasks with languages like Python and PHP.
3)Git
Git is the distributed version control system and has an emphasis on speed and performance. It is supported by all operating systems. Git is open source software and the most widely used modern version control system.
Why git?
Branch Workflow
One of the biggest advantages of Git is its branching capabilities. Unlike centralized version control systems, Git branches are cheap and easy to merge. This facilitates the feature branch workflow popular with many Git users.
Pull requests
A pull request is a way to ask another developer to merge one of your branches into their repository. This allows to keep track of changes and allows for discussions before integrating it with the rest of the codebase.
Community
In many circles, Git has come to be the expected version control system for new projects. If your team is using Git, odds are you won’t have to train new hires on your workflow, because they’ll already be familiar with distributed development.
Some frequently used git commands
git init - Used to create a local repository. Creates a .git subdirectory in the current working directory
git add filename - Adds the file to the repository.
git commit -m "commit message" - This will commit the changes made to the local repository.
git push origin master - uploads local repository content in the master branch to a remote repository.
git checkout - Used to change between branches.
Thank you for reading ! Hope you find this post useful and informative. Please leave suggestions and feedback on comments section. :)
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