A “software repository” is a “project archive” which contains all the source code for a given software where you can see when someone changed the source code.
There are many different software implementations like
- Apache Subversion (SVN)
- Mercurial
- GIT
All upcoming posts will be based on “GIT” since its the versioning system I am most comfortable with.
Advantages
- Multiple developers can work on a specific software simultaneously.
- It’s easy to jump back to an older state of source code without discarding the current state of development.
- You can mark “releases” to deliver specific versions of your software to customers and therefore better track bugs for specific versions.
- There are many online version control platforms like Github or Bitbucket which allow you to create and manage repositories via the browser or an app. These online version control platforms also allow you to push/pull commits to/from the online repository and manage issues for e.g. open source projects.
Disadvantages
- New developers need to learn the “GIT-Workflow” which can take some time to adjust to.