Chapter 2. Source Code Control Practices

At some point as a software developer you end up working with other developers in a team. It quickly becomes apparent that it's frequently necessary for multiple people to work on the same file without hindering productivity, and that it's vital to be able to return to past known states.

Source code control (SCC) systems help aid team dynamics of software developers. They provide the ability to track changes to source code and provide isolation between those changes.

SCC systems do not come for free. They are like any other tool in our tool belt, there's a wrong way to use them and a right way to use them.

This chapter serves to help provide the developer, team lead, or manager with a brief but hopefully detailed enough description of some common SCC practices.

This chapter will cover the following topics: