VERSION CONTROL

SOFTWARE
WHY DO WE NEED A VCS?
VCSs Track File Changes VCSs Tell Us:
 Who made the change?
 So you know whom to blame
 What has changed (added, removed, moved)?
 Changes within a file
 Addition, removal, or moving of files/directories
 Where is the change applied?
 Not just which file, but which version or branch
 When was the change made?
 Timestamp
 Why was the change made?
 Commit messages
Code is organized within a repository.
Basically, the Five W’s
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BRIEF HISTORY OF VERSION
CONTROL SOFTWARE
First Generation – Local Only Second Generation (Cont.)
 SCCS – 1972  Team Foundation Server – 2005
 Only option for a LONG time  Microsoft product, proprietary
 RCS – 1982  Good Visual Studio integration
 For comparison with SCCS, see this 1992 forum link
Third Generation – Decentralized
Second Generation – Centralized  BitKeeper – 2000
 CVS – 1986  GNU Bazaar – 2005
 Basically a front end for RCS  Canonical/Ubuntu
 SVN – 2000  Mercurial – 2005
 Tried to be a successor to CVS  Git – 2005
 Perforce – 1995 
 Proprietary, but very popular for a long time

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GIT – THE STUPID CONTENT
TRACKER
Started by Linus Torvalds – 2005
 After the BitKeeper debacle

Efficient for large projects

 E.g., Linux
 Was an order of magnitude faster than other
contemporary solutions

Non-linear development!
 Branching is cheap and easy!!!!

Official Site, Wikipedia,

Initial README commit (some profanity)

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TERMINOLOGY
Branch Commit
 A history of successive changes to code  Set of changes to a repository’s files
 A new branch may be created at any time, from  More on this later
any existing commit
 May represent versions of code Tag
 Version 1.x, 2.x, 3.x, etc.  Represents a single commit
 May Represent small bugfixes/feature  Often human-friendly
development  Version Numbers
 Branches are cheap
 Fast switching
A Repository may be created by:
 Easy to “merge” into other branches
 Cloning an existing one (git clone)
 Easy to create, easy to destroy  Creating a new one locally (git init)
 See this guide for best practices

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WHAT IS A COMMIT?
Specific snapshot within the development tree
Collection of changes applied to a project’s files
 Text changes, File and Directory addition/removal,
chmod

Metadata about the change

Identified by a SHA-1 Hash
 Can be shortened to approx. 6 characters for CLI use
 (e.g., “git show 5b16a5”)
 HEAD – most recent commit
 ORIG_HEAD – after a merge, the previous HEAD
 <commit>~n – the nth commit before <commit>
 e.g., 5b16a5~2 or HEAD~5
 master@{01-Jan-2018} – last commit on master branch
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TERMINOLOGY
Working Files Use “git diff” to see which changes exist.
 Files that are currently on your File System
Use “git add” to tell Git that a file’s
The Stage (also called the “index”) changes should be added to the stage.
 Staging is the first step to creating a commit
Use “git status” to see the changes in your
 The stage is what you use to tell Git which working files, as well as what changes
changes to include in the commit have been staged for the commit.
 File changes must be “added” to the stage
explicitly Use “git commit” to convert all staged
 Only changes that have been staged will be changes into a commit.
committed  git commit -m “my commit message”
 git commit -m “my commit message” -a
Checkout  Will automatically stage all files tracked by the repo & add
 Replace the current working files with those them to the commit.
from a specific branch or commit  Please don’t do this.
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A DISTRIBUTED VCS
What do we mean by distributed? Common Pattern:
 Cloning a repository (repo) creates a full copy  One canonical repository for the project (on
of that repo on your local machine. GitHub, for example)
 You can fetch updates from non-local  Every developer forks that repo on GitHub
repositories (e.g., repos on GitHub)  A fork is simply creating a copy of the repo on that remote
system
A non-local repositories is a remote  Every developer clones their own GitHub repo
 When you clone a repository, a remote called to their local machine
origin is created for you automatically in your  Every developer adds a remote pointing to the
local repo which points to the source repo. canonical (main, authoritative) repo, as well as
 Remotes are local settings. They do not other dev repos as needed
become part of your commits.  Devs work locally, push changes to their own
 You may set up additional remotes. remote, then request that the canonical repo
 Use case: Development teams, where each dev has their accept their changes via a pull request
own repository.
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 A DISTRIBUTED VCS
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*Names taken from 2017 Tropical Storms 10
 Local

GIT WORKFLOW
You pull from a remote to your local
repository.
 A pull is a fetch and a merge
 I prefer to use fetch and merge separately,
and avoid pull.

You push a branch from your local

repository to a remote.
A failure to merge is a merge conflict,
and must be resolved manually. (more
on next slide)
Helpful list of Git Commands
 https://cscrunch.com/blog/corey-pennycuff/
my-git-cheat-sheethandout

Image by Daniel Kinzler

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MERGING
A “merge” is the act of incorporating the What causes a merge conflict?
changes from one branch or commit into a  2 branches modify the same place in the same file.
second branch.  This often happens at the end of files or between
function declarations.
The histories do not have to match exactly;
 Git does not know which version of the change
Git will work to sort them out.
you want, or if you want both of them
If a merge fails, Git will notify you of a consecutively (and in which order), so you must
“merge conflict”. inspect the conflict and resolve it.

Merge conflicts must be fixed manually, If you cannot push your code to a remote,
and then added and committed. you probably need to first pull the latest
changes, resolve any existing merge
“git status” will show any merge conflicts. conflicts, then try to push again.
A successful merge creates a new commit Small commits are better than large ones!
automatically.
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COMMON INDUSTRY
PROGRAMMER WORKFLOW
1. Choose a bug/feature to work on
2. Checkout the appropriate branch
The pull request is where other
3. Pull the latest additions from the programmers review your code & make
main repository comments/suggestions.
4. Create a branch for the bug/feature If changes are needed to your code, then
request repeat the process.
5. Do the coding necessary & commit
6. Push the changes to your remote Never
7. Create a pull request to main repo

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PRACTICAL GUIDELINES
Do’s Don’ts
 Make small, incremental commits (within  Do not commit commented-out debug code.
reason) are good. Avoid monolithic commits at  It’s messy. It’s ugly. It’s unprofessional.
all cost.  Do not mix your commits. (e.g., Don’t commit
 Use a separate branch for each new bug/feature two bugfixes at the same time.)
request.  Do not commit sensitive information
 Write nice commit messages. Otherwise, the (passwords, database dumps, etc.)
commit log is useless.  Do not commit whitespace differences, unless
 Use a .gitignore to keep cruft out of your repo. it is specifically needed.
 Search engines are your friend. Someone else  Do not commit large binaries.
has had the same question/mistake/situation as
you, and they have already asked the question
online. It’s probably on StackOverflow.

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HELPFUL RESOURCES
Pro Git – free Apress ebook
Visualizing Git histories
Wikipedia on Version Control, with
definitions
My Git Cheat Sheet
Git Commit Etiquette for Junior Devs
https://www.codeschool.com/learn/git
 Free course to walk you through basic Git
concepts

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