Version Control Systems

What is a version Control

If one or more developers are working on the same project then there are chances that a same file being edited by two or more persons & at the end causing a dilema on what all changes to be made & which are the correct ones. Inorder to avoid this situation, version control is used.

The main advantages of using version control system are :

1)The version control system flags all the changes that are made to a file

2)An older version can be easily retrieved

3)One can easily view all the changes made by a developer on a particular file

4) can easily compare the current file to an older version etc

The mainly used Version Control systems are

1) CVS

2) SVN

CVS

[CVS http://www.nongnu.org/cvs/] - Concurrent Versioning System , was a frequently used version system & also being used now.

The main features are:

• Easy to use
• Concurrent versioning system
• Open source
• Individual File versioning (One version for a particular file)
• Can be integrated to IDEs like eclipse, Netbeans etc

SVN

[SVN http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.0/index.html] - Subversion, is an advanced form of CVS.Currently popular, so many projects moved from CVS to SVN

The main features are:

• Easy to use
• Concurrent versioning system
• Open source
• Global version number, unlike individual versioning in CVS
• Has standalone existence.