the bloggard

Considering all the software development projects I’ve been a part of and reflecting on the myriad of issues that typically arise, I can safely say that choosing a source control system was one of the more minor challenges that arose.

At it’s core, a source control (source code control system to use it’s full name), version control or revision control system is a tool used in software development to store the source code for one or more projects and provide a chronological archive of the changes made to the source code by the developers on the team. The chronological archive is in the form of snapshots of the current state of the source code at points in time where changes are made .

Unless you’re the type of person who represents themselves in court, the merits of using source control systems need no explanation. I was however surprised when I started to read more and more about a different type of source control system, the distributed source control system. Up to this point, and unbeknownst to myself, my experiences had been solely with centralized source control systems. My interest had been peaked to understand the need for a different type of source control system and what problems they were purporting to solve. (more…)