Version Control Concepts

Version Control

Source code security is critical to software development, ensuring that code remains secure and protected from unauthorized access, tampering, or vulnerabilities. One essential tool for managing source code security is version control, which allows teams to keep track of changes made to code over time, collaborate effectively, and maintain a history of edits and revisions.

How does it work?

Version control uses a repository; consider it a database of changes and a working copy where developers make edits. The working copy (sometimes called a checkout) is a personal copy of the project files, where developers can make arbitrary changes without affecting their teammates. When satisfied with their improvements, they commit their changes to the repository.

Distributed and centralized version control

Version control can be centralized or distributed. In centralized version control, there is a single repository, and updates are immediately visible to others upon committing. In contrast, in distributed version control, each user has their repository and must push changes to a central repository for others to see.

Git, Mercurial, and Subversion are the most popular version control systems. A distributed version control system like Git or Mercurial offers faster performance, increased error resistance, and advanced capabilities. Because they are more complex than centralized version control systems like Subversion, they can be tricky to learn.

In this learning resource, we will focus on Git as it is one of the industry's most widely used and robust version control systems. In the upcoming tasks, we will explore Git's fundamental concepts, commands, and best practices to ensure source code security and efficient collaboration in software development.