Source Control

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Source control is technologies that manage development of software code by tracking and merging or rejecting changes from multiple authors.

• overall process of managing code for a software development project

Version control

Within the overall process of source control, version control is an ID system for each iteration of a software product or automation script.

• version control numbers represent both:
  • the version
    • as made known to the customer or end user
  • internal build numbers
    • for use in the development process
• supports the change management process for software development projects

Central Repository

Software development environments use a repository server to maintain source code.

• e.g., Global Information Tracker (Git)
• When a developer commits new or changed code to the repository,
  • the new source code is tagged with an updated version number
  • and the old version archived
    • allows changes to be rolled back if a problem is discovered

Branching

• As scripts are developed and updated,
  • will be times when new features or changed functionality needs to be created and tested
• To facilitate this,
  • changes can be made in a branch copy of source code
    • stored separately to the main or production version
  • When the branch code is ready,
    • developer issues a pull request
    • and it is tested and validated for merging back into the main branch

Conflict Identification

• can be instances where two (or more) competing changes to code need to be integrated back into the main branch
• conflict identification highlights these clashes and provides developers with tools to resolve them