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Concept
Distributed version control
Summary
In software development, distributed version control (also known as distributed revision control) is a form of version control in which the complete codebase, including its full history, is mirrored on every developer's computer. Compared to centralized version control, this enables automatic management branching and merging, speeds up most operations (except pushing and pulling), improves the ability to work offline, and does not rely on a single location for backups. Git, the world's most popular version control system, is a distributed version control system.
In 2010, software development author Joel Spolsky described distributed version control systems as "possibly the biggest advance in software development technology in the [past] ten years".
Distributed version control systems (DVCS) use a peer-to-peer approach to version control, as opposed to the client–server approach of centralized systems. Distributed revision control synchronizes repositories by transferring patches from peer to peer. There is no single central version of the codebase; instead, each user has a working copy and the full change history.
Advantages of DVCS (compared with centralized systems) include:
Allows users to work productively when not connected to a network.
Common operations (such as commits, viewing history, and reverting changes) are faster for DVCS, because there is no need to communicate with a central server. With DVCS, communication is necessary only when sharing changes among other peers.
Allows private work, so users can use their changes even for early drafts they do not want to publish.
Working copies effectively function as remote backups, which avoids relying on one physical machine as a single point of failure.
Allows various development models to be used, such as using development branches or a Commander/Lieutenant model.
Permits centralized control of the "release version" of the project
On FOSS software projects it is much easier to create a project fork from a project that is stalled because of leadership conflicts or design disagreements.
Official source
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