List of Distributed Version Control Systems

Introduction

To discuss "version control", firstly, we need to know the meaning of "version". What is a version? So according to a definition, "version is a particular form of something differing in certain respects from an earlier form or other forms of the same type of thing". This simply means that a form of something with some modifications leads to a newer version of that thing. If I were to tell you the most suitable example of a version, in my opinion, it would be none other than an example of a mobile application that we regularly use in our day-to-day life, such as WhatsApp, YouTube, etc.

If you have created a project, say a web-based application or any project, you might have created a file named final, latest, or the latest news, and then you might have added dates to the name to avoid confusion. These various files with updated modifications are nothing but different versions of your project. Nowadays, almost every application launches new versions every few days, such as WhatsApp, YouTube, etc., that we install from the play store, app store, etc.

Now that we know what a version is let us move toward version control.

Imagine a situation where you are a developer, and you have, say, version 1.0 of your application running live and getting used by the users. Now you have found some bugs in the application, and you came up with another version, say Version 2.0, and you released this version. After releasing the latest version, you got to know from the users that your application is not running at all, or in other words, and it's Down. What would you do? You would try your best to solve the problem as soon as possible, right? What if you already had a copy of the previous version that you could easily switch to as soon as a problem is encountered? Here comes the term "Version Control" into the picture. Version control refers to the condition where we can control various versions hassle-free. How? Using VCS or Version Control System.

A Version Control System(VCS) is a system that gives users the facility to track various versions of the application hassle-free. The most popular Version Control System is Git which has captured a huge market of Version Control Systems out there.

Benefits of Version Control Systems

We have already seen the definition of Version, Version Control, and Version Control Systems. Now let us have a look at some benefits of Version Control Systems.

Best Practice

Version Control Systems are considered one of the best practices in the industry. Almost every developer uses version control systems while developing an application or while working on any application due to its benefits.

Change History

VCS keeps the whole change history of the file; is it of today or the previous year? This not only helps in looking over the changes made previously but also helps in learning from the mistakes made previously.

Branching and merging lead to Acceleration.

VCS has a branching and merging facility, which leads to more accelerated growth in the development of an application. Every developer can separately work on an independent branch without making changes in the main branch. This also helps in the well-maintained distribution of various features development and their maintenance.

Traceability

Traceability is indeed a great feature of Version Control Systems due to its significance. Tracing the changes gives many details, such as who made the changes and when and why the changes were made. Each of these details can be fetched using the traceability feature of Version Control Systems.

After the change is traced, it can be connected to the project management and bug-tracking software such as ClickUp, LogRocket, JIRA, etc. This not only accelerates the development process but also helps in keeping a record of all the changes with a proper description of the change, like the reason for that change, etc.

Reduced Risk

This is an obvious benefit of Version Control Systems. Since the companies, or particularly developers, have complete change history and versions of a file, the risk of version loss gets reduced to a great extent. This plays an important role in keeping the application always running. In case of a version failure, switching back to the previous version becomes seamless.

Efficient Collaboration

There can be a number of teams working simultaneously on one application. Hence it is necessary to have an efficient collaboration system that gives team members the ability to collaborate seamlessly. Version Control Systems makes such efficient collaboration possible as teams from all around the world can work on the application simultaneously and work on newer versions without the fear of missing the current version. (as discussed in Branching and merging section)

Hassle-free Software Development

All the points discussed above, such as Best Practice, Change History, Branching and Merging, Traceability, Reduced Risk, and Efficient Collaboration, lead to hassle-free software development, which is very necessary for this fast-paced software development environment.

Distributed Version Control System (DVCS)

The term Distributed Version Control System is also self-explanatory. In Distributed VCS, there is a central repository, and developers can have that whole repository in their local system as well. Hence for any change, firstly, the developers make the change in the local repository and test it, then after that, if the team decides to make it live, it is then committed to the central repository.

The challenges faced by the Central Version Control Systems are solved in Distributed VCS:

• Reduced Risk of repository loss or data loss. Here also, the central repository is only one, but its copies are stored on many developers' local systems, which reduces the risk of Repo loss to a very large extent. Suppose that due to some system failure or any technical issue, the central repository gets broken or all the data gets vanishes, but as it's a Distributed VCS, the data can be recovered from any developer's local system; amazing, right? This is one of the reasons why "Distributed Version Control Systems" have gained a lot of popularity among developers and organizations.

• Efficient Collaboration and low risk of merge conflicts Since every developer can have his own copy of the central repository on his local system, the tasks can be easily distributed among the teams as they can work on a specific piece of code without getting worried about the other team's collaboration. They can easily test their modifications on their local machines, and if they find them successful, they can push the modifications to the central repository from the local one. This results in seamless collaboration and a low risk of merge conflicts as each team have a different copy of the central repository.

Illustration: Full-fledged

In the above-given illustration, it can be observed that distributed Version Control System not only helps in developer to Central repository communication but also helps in dev-to-dev repository communication. This helps streamline the development process, which eventually results in fast-paced product/feature launches.

Some Popular DVCS

There are many distributed Version Control Systems in the market, but here we are going to see the two most popular DVCS. In fact, one of them is way more popular than the rest of the others, as per the Google Trends report.

Let us have a brief look at the distributed version control system list.

Git

Git is by far the most popular, free, and open source Distributed Version Control System out there. With remarkable community support, Git has captured a huge market of Version Control Systems. In addition to this, Git has an internet hosting service for software development and version control called GitHub. In simple words, GitHub acts as a host for all the repositories of Git.

Mercurial

Mercurial is a free and open source Distributed Version Control System which efficiently handles projects of any size and provides an easy and intuitive interface that makes it very simple to learn especially for beginners. Talking about the features, it offers almost all the major features that are offered by Git. Apart from this, it is fast and powerful and claims to have a lot of features for power users.

BitKeeper

BitKeeper is also a free, open source and fast DVCS. Also, it is an enterprise-ready DVCS that can scale up to very large projects and down to smaller ones. In addition to that, it has an easy-to-use command line interface and Hybrid Mode for binary files, which eventually makes Bitkeeper a flexible version control system.

Bazaar

Bazaar, like its competitors, is also a free DVCS. It does not matter whether you are an individual developer, a team, or even a community of developers, Bazaar scales and adapts as per the needs. It has Cross-platform support, Plugins, and you can work offline too. Also, Bazaar is a part of the GNU project and is sponsored by Canonical.

Some Popular Version Control Repository Hosting Platforms

Platforms such as GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket, etc. play a very important role in hosting the DVCS repositories, for example, hosting git repositories. These platforms provide great UI(User Interface) that makes them more user-friendly. Let us have a brief look at some of these version control platforms.

GitHub

GitHub, owned by Microsoft, is by far the most popular Git repository hosting platform. It is used by over 83 million developers out there. It not only allows you to host your git repositories but provides a variety of functionalities that facilitate software development and team collaborations. It comes with free as well as paid plans. Apart from this, GitHub has a huge open-source popularity compared to its competitors.

GitLab

GitLab is also a Git repository hosting platform with added functionalities. GitLab looks more focused towards DevOps and CI/CD functionalities. Like GitHub, GitLab also has free as well as paid plans for different kinds of users such as Individual Contributers, Directors, and Executives.

BitBucket

BitBucket, owned by Atlassian, can hostGit as well as Mercurial repositories. BitBucket can be integrated with other Atlassian products such as Jira and Asana. Apart from this, BitBucket is cost-efficient and has high project visibility.

Additional Resources

1. Github vs GitLab