Importance of Version Control System (VCS) for Developers

The Version Control Systems are important tools that every developer should be using, especially for PHP programmers. There are instances that developers don't make part the version control systems on their development tool set. We are going to discuss the Version Control System, why they are so important to be used by all developers. Before discussing the importance of VCS let us first define the meaning of VCS and its uses. What are Version Control Systems (VCS)? Version control systems (VCS) are systems that can keep track of the multiple versions of the files that make part of a project. They are also know revision control systems or source control systems. The main goal of these systems is to keep an archive of the changes done to each project file, so it is possible to: *** Recover any past version of file *** Compare two versions of a file and see the actual changes done on the file contents *** See which developer was responsible for each change Undo inconvenient changes by reverting to past versions Importance of Version Control System (VCS): The uses of VCS explains the importance of the system, it should be clear why these systems are important for all developers. We are going to emphasize some aspects. *** Your project files will be hosted in a repository. When you decide to make some changes to any files, you can checkout the files, make changes, test it, commit the changes back to repository, so new versions of the changed files are added. *** If you do not use a VCS you will have an hard time managing the changes you do to a project, especially when it has already many files. *** VCS is very easy to see which files are changed and what exactly were the changes, you can figure what is the new code and what debugging code does not belong in the final changed version. *** In instances when a project is developed by multiple people you can easily see who has done each of the changes, for this reason, you can ask them to explain the changes they have done. *** Repositories may be hosted in the local machine of a developer or in a remote machine. Keeping it in a remote machine makes it more convenient to manage a project developed by several people and the best part is that, programmers can make changes to the project files at the same time.