If you are working in team, you probably experienced frustration which comes with the file sharing.

No matter how hard you work, when more people are working on one project without version control system, things may become chaotic.

If you work with developers in developing and implementation of websites, connection between front-end and back-end may be pretty annoying.

Problems as overwriting, losing files and working on the old versions are constantly happening. Once back-end functionality is integrated in front-end, you have to be careful not to spoil something where other developer invested many working hours.

Even if you have same repository, if one team member forget to download latest file version, all work may be spoiled.

In this article we will give short resume about Git, fantastic system for version control.

What is version control?

Version control is great way to solve file sharing problem. This is how it works: There is one main repository for all project files. Team members are checking files, making changes and then update them (commit). Version Control System (VCS) automatically writes who made changes to file, when they are changed and what is new in them.

Also, system require us to write notes about changes, so everyone who is working on the project knows what is done and why. Every file also has revision’s history so you can go back at any moment if anything goes wrong.

Good VCS can allow you to connect more than one changes on the same file. If you and someone else work locally on the same file, when you upload those files on main repository, system will connect both sets of changes and create complete and updated file. If some conflict occurs while connecting you will be notified.

Even if you don’t work with the team, version control may be very useful and save you a lot of time. File backup is one of the most useful thing you can do to prevent losing of your works.

Get to know Git

git

Now when you know all benefits of version control system, it is clear that it is necessary for every web development team. On the web there are several program solution for this, and one of the most popular is Git.

Git is free open source version control system designed for handling small and big projects with focus on the speed and effectiveness.

What departs Git from other solutions is that it has distributed version control system, which means that every user has completely copy of data form repository located on his local machine. This brings several benefits:

  • Everything is local, so you can work offline
  • You are not depended on server which may go offline and ruin your project
  • You don’t have to communicate with central server, process are done much faster

To start using Git, you can download the latest version here. Depending on OS which you use you can choose installation version.

On the same site you can see quality documentation with detailed instructions which will help you to get to know better with this system.

If you prefer video tutorials then we suggest you this awesome resource with quick Git instructions which will make faster the process of learning.

Now when you have clearly see the benefits of this system, you can easily start using it and improve your web development workflow.

 

 

Kosta Tošić

SEO / Internet marketing specialist at PopArt Studio