Version Control ¶

Version control, a.k.a. source control is a system that manages changes to files in a project over time. Version control systems (VCS) are either:

• Centralized Version Control Systems (CVCS) 🏭: a central server keeps track of every change (ex: SVN).

• Distributed Version Control Systems (DVCS) 🏠: each user can keep track of every change (ex: GIT, Mercurial).

It's quite common in software development, especially GIT.

VCS addresses several challenges that arise when working on software development:

• Tracking Changes 🔎: who made a change? when? why?...
• Collaboration 🌍: handle problems when multiple people work on the same file. Also handle problems when a copy of the project was made to test something, and we need to "merge" it.
• Backup and Recovery 😵: if something goes wrong, such as a file or some code being deleted, we can revert these changes.
• ...

Given the implementation of version control, the importance of proper versioning has significantly increased.

The commonly adopted approach for assigning version names to projects is known as Semantic Versioning.

• 🗒️ The format is MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH
  • MAJOR: breaking change (of the API)
  • MINOR: non-breaking change, backward compatible
  • PATCH: internal change
• When $\text{MAJOR}=0$: in development
• When $\text{MAJOR}\ge 1$: Stable

An alternative is Calendar Versioning.

• Plastic SCM

• Open Source Guides (👻)
• OpenSSF/CII (👻, Best practices)
• OpenSSF Scorecard
• FOSSA (👻, "Audit-Grade Open Source Risk Management")
• CodeTriage (👻, Look for issues to tackle)
• OpenCollective (👻, Raise funds)
• Gitter