Introduction
A version control system is a kind of software that helps the developer team to efficiently communicate and manage(track) all the changes that have been made to the source code along with information like who made and what changes have been made. A separate branch is created for every contributor who made the changes and the changes aren’t merged into the original source code unless all are analyzed as soon as the changes are green signaled they merged into the main source code. It not only keeps source code organized but also improves productivity by making the development process smooth.
Consider yourself working in a company where you are asked to work on some live project. You can’t change the main code as it is in production, and any change may cause inconvenience to the user, also you are working in a team so you need to collaborate with your team to and adapt their changes. Version control helps you with, merging different requests to the main repository without making any undesirable changes. You may test the functionalities without putting it live, and you don’t need to download and set up each time, just pull the changes and do the changes, test it, and merge it back.
TYPES OF VCS
Types of Version Control Systems:
- Local Version Control System
- Centralized Version Control System
- Distributed Version Control System
Local Version Control Systems: It is one of the simplest forms and has a database that kept all the changes to files under revision control. RCS is one of the most common VCS tools. It keeps patch sets (differences between files) in a special format on disk. By adding up all the patches it can then re-create what any file looked like at any point in time.
CENTRALIZED VCS: In this type of VCS, a central repository holds all the files of the project, and the users (here developers) work on the working directory on their personal computers. To be more specific, the developers make the changes (or updates) in the working directory and then commit the changes directly to the central repository. It’s simple but not so efficient when it comes to the development and maintenance of complex projects and applications
DISTRIBUTED VCS: In Distributed VCS, there is a central repository, and developers can also have that whole repository in their local system. Hence, for any change, firstly, the developers make the change in the local repository and test it; then, if the team decides to make it live, it is committed to the central repository.