Version control has been around for many years, but grown in popularity as the size of projects increased and collaboration and sharing became more important. Every large software development project relies on it, but even small projects, like those you will do for this course can benefit from it.
Why use version control?
- Version control is like an automatic backup. Once you commit a new file or change, you can always go back to that version.
- Version control facilitates sharing and collaboration. No need to email files back and forth.
- It keeps track of who made what changes when, making it easier to followup on questions later
- Version control systems provide mechanisms for resolving conflicts that arise when multiple people make changes at the same time.
Why use git and github.com?
- git has become one of the most popular version control systems.
- github.com is one of the most popular places to host repositories and they provide free public repositories to all and free private repositories for educational use.
- A lot of software you may eventually use is distributed via github, getting a basic understanding of how git and github work during this course will make it easier to get and use this software even if you never modify and share changes back to the authors.
Resources
- Check out github.com’s help pages.
- Github has a great interactive learning lab.
- Software Carpentry has a good overview of git and github.com
- Git -The Simple Guide
- Here is a link to github’s pdf cheat sheet
