Source Control Tools
Learn about source control tools and their types.
Source control management (SCM), also known as version control, is a collection of technologies that has been a standard software development practice for decades. SCM tools protect the code from loss and provide a collaboration platform for developers to contribute new work to a shared codebase. Instead of overwriting files, each change to a code file creates a new version. This allows developers to roll back changes to files and recover a previous state of their code.
The right SCM tool makes a big difference when adopting DevOps. The reasons for this are best understood by taking a look at the two major types of SCM tools and their differences.
Types of SCM tools
There are several types of SCM tools available. Here are some commonly used types:
Centralized version control systems (CVCS)
Systems of this type include tools such as Subversion, CVS, Perforce, and ClearCase. The repository, which stores the files and their version history metadata, is stored on a central server. Only code, not the entire repository, is stored on developers’ workstations. Conflicting edits are prevented by a checkout mechanism ...