Version Control, Git, and GitHub

Tuesday May 19, 2015

setup

Do you remember highschool group projects? Do you remember the difficulty in getting your group together and on the same page. Well if you work in tech these days or if you are the lead organizer for any kind of group, you will find that those highschool dilemma's are still plaguing your life. The problem has always been finding time and gathering the right tools to make a group successful. Enter Version Control, Git, and Github.

version control

Version control and version control systems improve the way individuals and collaborations work. A version control system is designed to track changes. so that if person A makes a change that destroys your entire project person B can calmy go back to an earlier version. Over the course of a project there are tremedious amounts of changes that can happen. Having a version control system in place that provides fine tuned control over those changes allows for a smoother project workflow with fewer stops do to bugs or mistakes.

git

Git is a type of Version Control System(VCS). Git enables you to maintain focus on the workflow of a project by imposing constraints on how and when you save a version. Git is local to your machine this means you no longer have to get your group all in one place at one time. The way that git keeps track of changes is by keeping files under it’s supervision. this happen is in one of three stages. The first stage is the working stage. This is where the files are when you make changes to them. The next stage is the staging area. This is where you find files that you have modified but have not saved with git. Finally there is the committed area. This is where you save the changes you have made and git keeps a record of how the files looked at this stage. All saves in git are check-summed. What this mean is that after you have saved a version it cannot be lost.

Github

Github is a web-based application that allows you to store your git repositories in a remote location. The main reason for storing your code on Github is because it’s free for open source projects and allows for greater collaboration between developers.