CSC/ECE 517 Fall 2009/wiki1a 3 ee

Distributed Version Control Systems

Overview of Distributed Version Control

Distributed version control is a type of revision control system where each user has their own content repository, rather than off in a central location. This allows for greater flexibility for individual developers within a project, as they can "do what they want" to their own version of the repository, without interference from other developers. As developers wish to incorporate external changes, they can "pull" a set of changes into their own repository.

Previously, centralized systems have been the only widely used version control systems. But recently, distributed version control systems have started to take hold in a big way.

Infrastructure

One reason distributed version control systems are gaining popularity is that the lack of a central "main" server empowers the individual developer.

Repositories

Instead of a central project repository, each developer has their own local repository. This local repository is fully independent and behaves just as one would expect any repository to. One can commit changes, view change logs and roll back versions. But since it is fully self-contained on the developers machine, this can be done with no network connection.

Sharing Changes

When a developer commits a change to their repository, that change set is assigned a guid. If another developer on the project wants to incorporate another users changes, they can pull changes associated with a specific guid from another repository. Because each developer controls their own repository, changes can be incorporated continuously as they are needed, instead of submitting changes and waiting on a "merge-master" to integrate new features.

Branching and Merging

Another reason many projects are moving towards distributed systems is that giving each developer their own repository makes branching and merging natural.