An introduction to version control and Git

A version control system (sometimes called revision control) is a tool that lets you track the history and attribution of your project files over time (stored in a repository), and which helps the developers in the team to work together. Modern version control systems help them work simultaneously, in a non-blocking way, by giving each developer his or her own sandbox, preventing their work in progress from conflicting, and all the while providing a mechanism to merge changes and synchronize work.

Distributed version control systems such as Git give each developer his or her own copy of the project's history, a clone of a repository. This is what makes Git fast: nearly all operations are performed locally, and are flexible: you can set up repositories in many ways. Repositories meant for developing also provide a separate working area (or a worktree) with project files for each developer. The branching model used by Git enables cheap local branching...