Version Control

Version Control is a system that allows you to revisit various versions of a file or set of files by recording changes

version control, one can revert a file or project to a previous version, track modifications and modifying individuals, and compare changes.

Local Version Control

entails one database on your hard disk that stores changes to files.

Centralized Version Control

This system entails a single server storing all changes and file versions, which can be accessed by various clients. This streamlined the collaboration process (by eliminating the need to involve all local databases), allowed programmers to have more knowledge of team members’ activities with certain files, and gave administrators much more control over divvying up revision privileges.

Distributed Version Control

addresses the major vulnerability of the CVS: the server as a single point of failure. If a CVS goes down, collaborators cannot work with each other on a file or save changes and new versions.

Git

Git is a DVCS that stores data in a file system made up of snapshots. Each time you save a changed version of your project — called commit — Git creates a snapshot of the file and stores a reference to it. If the file has not changed, Git only stores a reference to the already-stored identical version of it.

Local Operations

Git mostly relies on local operations because most necessary information can be found in local resources. This allows for process expediency because a project’s history resides on the local disk, eliminating the need to fetch history information from the server, and allowing one to continue work on a project even when not online or on a VPN.

Tracking Changes

Git will always detect file corruption or loss of information in transit.

Loss of Data

Git is set up to greatly minimize the possibility of irreversible damage to files, such as accidentally lost data. Git makes it extremely difficult for a snapshot of your file that is committed to be lost.

States

Files in Git can reside in three main states: committed, modified and staged

Workflow

The local Git repository has three components:

Working Directory: The actual files reside here. Index: The area used for staging Head: Points to the most recent commit

Remote Repositories

In order to collaborate on Git projects, you must interact with remote repositories, versions of a project residing online or on a network. You can work with multiple repositories, for which you can have read/write or read-only privileges. Teams can use remote repositories to push information to and pull data from.

Cloned Repositories

As mentioned earlier, for cloned repositories, Git will automatically give the name “origin” to the server from which you cloned and the name “master” to your local branch