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Version Control System

Software Engineering

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A version control system is a tool that automates controlling, organizing and tracking different versions of computer files, primarily source code, so that software teams can maintain multiple versions of a program and let different developers work on the same or different versions simultaneously without manually keeping near-identical copies. IBM's IEBUPDTE tool, dating to 1962, is considered an early precursor, and the Source Code Control System, released in 1972, was the first system deliberately designed for source code, followed by RCS in 1982 and later systems such as CVS, Subversion and the distributed system Git. Version control lets teams manage the evolution of code, prevents developers from overwriting each other's work, and helps them identify and resolve bugs across different versions.

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