Revision Control Software (RCS) are the software tools that automate the process of Revision Control i.e. managing revisions of software artifacts.
Revision control is also known as Version Control Software (VCS), and a few other names. Here, we use the terms revision and version interchangeably.
Revision control is the process of managing multiple versions of a piece of information. In its simplest form, this is something that many people do by hand: every time you modify a file, save it under a new name that contains a number, each one higher than the number of the preceding version.
Manually managing multiple versions of even a single file is an error-prone task, though, so software tools to help automate this process have long been available. The earliest automated revision control tools were intended to help a single user to manage revisions of a single file. Over the past few decades, the scope of revision control tools has expanded greatly; they now manage multiple files, and help multiple people to work together. The best modern revision control tools have no problem coping with thousands of people working together on projects that consist of hundreds of thousands of files.
There are a number of reasons why you or your team might want to use an automated revision control tool for a project. It will track the history and evolution of your project, so you don't have to. For every change, you'll have a log of who made it; why they made it; when they made it; and what the change was.
When you're working with other people, revision control software makes it easier for you to collaborate. For example, when people more or less simultaneously make potentially incompatible changes, the software will help you to identify and resolve those conflicts.
It can help you to recover from mistakes. If you make a change that later turns out to be an error, you can revert to an earlier version of one or more files. In fact, a really good revision control tool will even help you to efficiently figure out exactly when a problem was introduced.
It will help you to work simultaneously on, and manage the drift between, multiple versions of your project. Most of these reasons are equally valid, at least in theory, whether you're working on a project by yourself, or with a hundred other people.
-- [adapted from
bryan-mercurial-guide ]
Mercurial: The Definitive Guide by Bryan O'Sullivan retrieved on 2012/07/11
Revision Control Software
In the context of RCS, what is a Revision? Give an example.
Versions of a piece of information. For example, take a file containing program code. If you modify the code and save the file, you have a new version of that file.
- a. Help a single user manage revisions of a single file
- b. Help a developer recover from a incorrect modification to a code file
- c. Makes it easier for a group of developers to collaborate on a project
- d. Manage the drift between multiple versions of your project
- e. Detect when multiple developers make incompatible changes to the same file
- f. All of them are benefits of RCS
f
Suppose You are doing a team project with Tom, Dick, and Harry but those three have not even heard the term RCS. How do you explain RCS to them as briefly as possible, using the project as an example?