Version control, revision control or source control are all umbrella terms for systems that allow you to manage your code and assets.
The two popular systems in the web dev community are CVS (Concurrent Versioning System) and SVN (Subversion).
In the last 6 years I’ve had a great deal of exposure to Subversion. It has become the backbone to the larger projects I manage/develop.
A prime example of this is MailBigFile.com. The site has paying subscribers in over 100 countries around the world, and is deployed across multiple datacenters. It receives over a quarter of a million visits per month, with notable clients such as BBC, Carlsberg, Pepsi, Nikon and AEG Live. It’s a pretty big deal.
With mulitple developers working on the project at any one time, managing the code is vital to a smooth development process.
Subversion has the concept of a trunk and branches… like a tree! The live version of the site is defined as the trunk. You can create branches which are essentially a copy of the trunk.
It is best practise to carry out your development on a dev branch, although you can call them anything.
More to come…
