Revision Control System

While I was working on my freescale smart car racing project, on the final day of competition the codes were really messed up. I had as many as 40 folders all containing some copy of the code. These folders were named as 1.0, 2.0 as I want through the timeline removing bugs and introducing changes. What happened on the final day was that I was not able to get which copy of the code does not contain bugs while modifying a back date code. So, finally I realised the importance of revision control even for small projects.


The diagram gives a overview of the various categories of the revision control system.

 

What exactly is a revision control system -  A revision control system is a software management package that will take care of keeping your previous history of the code. When you remove some bugs it will update the source with a so called 'branch' (if no new features are added) or otherwise if some new features are added you will update you source with a 'trunk'. The best thing about all this is that you can revert back your source and obtain a copy of code that you had in history. Besides this it will also take care of necessary documentation of the changes you made to the code so you will never forget what exactly you changed on a back date. This type of revision control is also used in wikis, for which the best possible example is wikipedia, where any user can revert back the changes of any other malicious user and also look at what did he changed exactly.

This type of facility has really broadened the wings of open source software where thousands of programmers all around the globe at different geographical locations contribute merge/sync there changes to the repository and hence come up with a big project.

The best thing about all this is that this all happens in one folder in a very clean environment so you will never mess up finding some source file of you project.

What is a Repository - is a type of storage location on Internet that contain software packages or source files. for example the ubuntu repository contain all packages that can be installed in ubuntu.

This is a overview of what happens during the development process using a revision control system.

I have used google and wikipedia to collect all information that is compiled here to give a overview of the RCS. So if yo want to learn more about revision control system try googling the keywords for a start and rest is yours own stamina to wander the sea of internet.