What is Version Control ?

1. Version control, also known as source control, is the practice of tracking and managing changes to software code. 
2. Version control systems are software tools that help software teams manage changes to source code over time. 
3. Version control software keeps track of every modification to the code in a special kind of database. 
4. If a mistake is made, developers can turn back the clock and compare earlier versions of the code to help fix the mistake while minimizing disruption to all team members.
5. For most software teams, the source code is a repository of the invaluable knowledge and understanding about the problem domain that the developers have collected and refined through careful effort. 
6. Version control protects source code from both catastrophe and the casual degradation of human error and unintended consequences.

Version control helps teams solve these kinds of problems, tracking every individual change by each contributor and helping prevent concurrent work from conflicting. Changes made in one part of the software can be incompatible with those made by another developer working at the same time. 

This problem should be discovered and solved in an orderly manner without blocking the work of the rest of the team. Further, in all software development, any change can introduce new bugs on its own and new software can't be trusted until it's tested. So testing and development proceed together until a new version is ready.

Great version control systems facilitate a smooth and continuous flow of changes to the code rather than the frustrating and clumsy mechanism of file locking - giving the green light to one developer at the expense of blocking the progress of others.

 

Version control software is an essential part of the every-day of the modern software team's professional practices. 

Benefits of version control systems

Using version control software is a best practice for high performing software and DevOps teams.  

Version Control Systems (VCS) have seen great improvements over the past few decades and some are better than others. 

VCS are sometimes known as SCM (Source Code Management) tools or RCS (Revision Control System). 

One of the most popular VCS tools in use today is called Git. Git is a Distributed VCS, a category known as DVCS, more on that later. 

Like many of the most popular VCS systems available today, Git is free and open source. 

1. A complete long-term change history of every file. -- This means every change made by many individuals over the years. Changes include the creation and deletion of files as well as edits to their contents. Having the complete history enables going back to previous versions to help in root cause analysis for bugs and it is crucial when needing to fix problems in older versions of software. 
2. Branching and merging -- Having team members work concurrently is a no-brainer, but even individuals working on their own can benefit from the ability to work on independent streams of changes. Creating a "branch" in VCS tools keeps multiple streams of work independent from each other while also providing the facility to merge that work back together, enabling developers to verify that the changes on each branch do not conflict. 
3. Traceability -- Being able to trace each change made to the software and connect it to project management and bug tracking software such as Jira, and being able to annotate each change with a message describing the purpose and intent of the change can help not only with root cause analysis and other forensics.  This can be especially important for working effectively with legacy code and is crucial in enabling developers to estimate future work with any accuracy.

While it is possible to develop software without using any version control, doing so subjects the project to a huge risk that no professional team would be advised to accept. So the question is not whether to use version control but which version control system to use.

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