In this article, we will learn how to set up a popular version control system: Git. A version control system, also known as revision control system, can be thought of as a repository of files that record every single change in a file. Every update to a file or set of files is recorded as a new version, with some metadata about that specific modification. Metadata contains details of who made the change, a small comment explaining why the change was made, details on exactly what changed in each file, and a timestamp. You can easily switch back to an older version when needed.
Version control systems are generally used to track software source code, but they can be used with virtually any type of file. It is necessary for collaborative work where two or more people are working on the same file. Everyone maintains their own local copy of each file and works on them. When a person satisfactorily completes his work, he sends the updated file to the central repo. Others can synchronize their local copies with this central repo and receive any updates. If two people happen to modify the same file at the same time, they can choose what to keep and what to remove before sending updates to the central repository. If any issue happens with the latest updates, source code can be replaced with previous known-to-work versions. This allows you to track the changes over time and find the cause of the problem.
Over time, multiple version control systems have been developed; some are centralized version control systems (CVCS) and others are distributed version control systems. Centralized systems consist of a single central server that hosts all the versions and updates. Everyone sends new changes to the central server and gets updates from it. This makes it easy to administer the repository and enable fine-grained control, but it also becomes a candidate for a single point of failure. If a central server goes down, no one can push changes or get updates. CVS and Subversion are well known centralized version control systems.
Distributed version control systems, on the other hand, overcome this problem by distributing a full copy of the repository on each participating system. If a central server goes down, a copy from any client can be sent to the server to restore it. One can even choose to promote a client as a new server. Git, Mercurial, and Bazaar are examples of distributed version control systems. Bazaar is sponsored and developed by Canonical, the developer of Ubuntu. It is primarily focused on community-supported open source software development.
In this article, we will focus on Git, a popular version control system. It was primarily developed by Linus Torvalds to support the development of the Linux kernel. Git is influenced by the lessons learned from other version control systems. It was developed with the aim to support large projects, such as the Linux kernel, and the need for a fully distributed system and high speed. Later, GitHub, a social network for code and developers, ensured the widespread adoption of Git.
In this article, we will learn how to work with Git. Starting with the basics, such as installing Git and using it locally, we will also cover some advanced features of Git. We will also set up our own Git hosting with GitLab, an open source tool.
