What is Version Control?

Version control (also known as revision control, source control or (source) code management (SCM)) is the management of changes to documents, programs, and other information stored as computer files. It is most commonly used in software development, where a team of people may be changing the same files. But it doesn't matter whether you're a developer, designer, editor or project manager, chances are that the ability to track changes to your files over time is of great importance. Version control systems are designed to provide solutions for this as much as possible by the following means:

• Managing changes to files and folders over time and maintaining the history of these changes.
• Managing the inter-dependencies of these files such that the state of a set of files can be defined at any given point in time and then revisited in the future.
• Sharing a set of files between team members.
• Managing the interactions of team members who need to access and modify the files which comprise the project they are working on.

So the idea is that version control can help you and your team manage the complexity of your project.