abdularif0705 / hello-world

Assignment 0 - Intro to Software Engineering

hello-world

A third-year student at the University of Windsor pursuing a Double Major (Bachelor of Commerce Honours Business Administration and Computer Science).

1. What’s a version control system? A version control system, or VCS, tracks the history of changes as people and teams collaborate on projects together. As the project evolves, teams can run tests, fix bugs, and contribute new code with the confidence that any version can be recovered at any time. Developers can review project history to find out:

Which changes were made? Who made the changes? When were the changes made? Why were changes needed?

2. What’s a distributed version control system? Git is an example of a distributed version control system (DVCS) commonly used for open source and commercial software development. DVCSs allow full access to every file, branch, and iteration of a project, and allows every user access to a full and self-contained history of all changes. Unlike once popular centralized version control systems, DVCSs like Git don’t need a constant connection to a central repository. Developers can work anywhere and collaborate asynchronously from any time zone.

Without version control, team members are subject to redundant tasks, slower timelines, and multiple copies of a single project. To eliminate unnecessary work, Git and other VCSs give each contributor a unified and consistent view of a project, surfacing work that’s already in progress. Seeing a transparent history of changes, who made them, and how they contribute to the development of a project helps team members stay aligned while working independently.

3. Why Git? According to the latest Stack Overflow developer survey, more than 70 percent of developers use Git, making it the most-used VCS in the world. Git is commonly used for both open source and commercial software development, with significant benefits for individuals, teams and businesses.

Git lets developers see the entire timeline of their changes, decisions, and progression of any project in one place. From the moment they access the history of a project, the developer has all the context they need to understand it and start contributing.

Developers work in every time zone. With a DVCS like Git, collaboration can happen any time while maintaining source code integrity. Using branches, developers can safely propose changes to production code.

Businesses using Git can break down communication barriers between teams and keep them focused on doing their best work. Plus, Git makes it possible to align experts across a business to collaborate on major projects.

4. What’s a repository? A repository, or Git project, encompasses the entire collection of files and folders associated with a project, along with each file’s revision history. The file history appears as snapshots in time called commits, and the commits exist as a linked-list relationship, and can be organized into multiple lines of development called branches. Because Git is a DVCS, repositories are self-contained units and anyone who owns a copy of the repository can access the entire codebase and its history. Using the command line or other ease-of-use interfaces, a git repository also allows for: interaction with the history, cloning, creating branches, committing, merging, comparing changes across versions of code, and more.

Working in repositories keeps development projects organized and protected. Developers are encouraged to fix bugs, or create fresh features, without fear of derailing mainline development efforts. Git facilitates this through the use of topic branches: lightweight pointers to commits in history that can be easily created and deprecated when no longer needed.

Through platforms like GitHub, Git also provides more opportunities for project transparency and collaboration. Public repositories help teams work together to build the best possible final product.

5. How GitHub works? GitHub builds collaboration directly into the development process. Work is organized into repositories, where developers can outline requirements or direction and set expectations for team members. Then, using the GitHub flow, developers simply create a branch to work on updates, commit changes to save them, open a pull request to propose and discuss changes, and merge pull requests once everyone is on the same page.