What is Version Control for engineers?
Version control software is an essential tool for engineers working on software projects. It helps manage changes to source code files over time while maintaining a history of those changes. Version control enables tracking code modifications, comparing earlier versions to newer ones, merging changes made by multiple developers working on the same code, and rolling back to previous versions if necessary.
There are several popular version control systems to choose from. Git is currently the most widely used open source option. It is distributed, meaning each developer has a local copy of the full history on their machine. Git makes branching and merging code especially easy. GitHub provides free online Git repositories for open source projects and offers paid plans for private repositories.
Apache Subversion (SVN) pioneered the version control concept and is still used by many projects today as a centralized system, with a single master repository storing the definitive history. It may be easier to get started with than Git due to its simpler concepts and workflow.
Mercurial is another distributed option similar to Git. It uses Python so can better integrate with Python projects. Perforce Helix Core is a proprietary centralized system with advanced workflow customization features, which is popular among game studios.
Overall, version control is indispensable for collaborating on software changes efficiently while maintaining quality and stability. Engineers should choose a system based on their team size, preferred workflow, infrastructure requirements, and integration needs.