Repository (version control)

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In version control systems, a repository is a data structure that stores metadata for a set of files or directory structure. [1] Depending on whether the version control system in use is distributed, like Git or Mercurial, or centralized, like Subversion, CVS, or Perforce, the whole set of information in the repository may be duplicated on every user's system or may be maintained on a single server. [2] Some of the metadata that a repository contains includes, among other things, a historical record of changes in the repository, a set of commit objects, and a set of references to commit objects, called heads.

Contents

The main purpose of a repository is to store a set of files, as well as the history of changes made to those files. [3] Exactly how each version control system handles storing those changes, however, differs greatly. For instance, Subversion in the past relied on a database instance but has since moved to storing its changes directly on the filesystem. [4] These differences in storage techniques have generally led to diverse uses of version control by different groups, depending on their needs. [5]

Overview

A repository being shown in GitLab, an open source code forge. GitLab running 14.3.0-pre (2021-08).png
A repository being shown in GitLab, an open source code forge.

In software engineering, a version control system is used to keep track of versions of a set of files, usually to allow multiple developers to collaborate on a project. The repository keeps track of the files in the project, which is represented as a graph.

A distributed version control system is made up of central and branch repositories. A central repository exists on the server. To make changes to it, a developer first works on a branch repository, and proceeds to commit the change to the former.

Forges

A code forge is a web interface to a version control system. A user can commonly browse repositories and their constituent files on the page itself.

Static web hosting

While forges are mainly used to perform version control operations, some forges allow users to host static web pages by uploading its source code (such as HTML and JavaScript, but not PHP) to a repository. This is usually done in order to provide documentation or a landing page for a software project.

The use of repositories as a place to upload web documents allows version control to be integrated, and additionally allows quick iteration because changes are pushed through the Version Control System instead of having to upload the file through a protocol like FTP. [6]

Examples of this kind of service include GitHub Pages and GitLab Pages.

See also

Related Research Articles

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Concurrent Versions System is a version control system originally developed by Dick Grune in July 1986.

In software engineering, version control is a class of systems responsible for managing changes to computer programs, documents, large web sites, or other collections of information. Version control is a component of software configuration management.

Revision Control System (RCS) is an early implementation of a version control system (VCS). It is a set of UNIX commands that allow multiple users to develop and maintain program code or documents. With RCS, users can make their own revisions of a document, commit changes, and merge them. RCS was originally developed for programs but is also useful for text documents or configuration files that are frequently revised.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Apache Subversion</span> Free and open-source software versioning and revision control system

Apache Subversion is a software versioning and revision control system distributed as open source under the Apache License. Software developers use Subversion to maintain current and historical versions of files such as source code, web pages, and documentation. Its goal is to be a mostly compatible successor to the widely used Concurrent Versions System (CVS).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Git</span> Software for version control of files

Git is a distributed version control system that tracks changes in any set of computer files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers who are collaboratively developing source code during software development.

In software development, distributed version 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, 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mantis Bug Tracker</span> Bug tracking system

Mantis Bug Tracker is a free and open source, web-based bug tracking system. The most common use of MantisBT is to track software defects. However, MantisBT is often configured by users to serve as a more generic issue tracking system and project management tool.

In software development, a codebase is a collection of source code used to build a particular software system, application, or software component. Typically, a codebase includes only human-written source code system files; thus, a codebase usually does not include source code files generated by tools or binary library files, as they can be built from the human-written source code. However, it generally does include configuration and property files, as they are the data necessary for the build.

A source-code-hosting facility is a file archive and web hosting facility for source code of software, documentation, web pages, and other works, accessible either publicly or privately. They are often used by open-source software projects and other multi-developer projects to maintain revision and version history, or version control. Many repositories provide a bug tracking system, and offer release management, mailing lists, and wiki-based project documentation. Software authors generally retain their copyright when software is posted to a code hosting facilities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mercurial</span> Distributed revision-control tool for software developers

Mercurial is a distributed revision control tool for software developers. It is supported on Microsoft Windows, Linux, and other Unix-like systems, such as FreeBSD and macOS.

CodePlex was a forge website by Microsoft. While it was active, it allowed shared development of open-source software. Its features included wiki pages, source control based on Mercurial, TFVC, Subversion or Git, discussion forums, issue tracking, project tagging, RSS support, statistics, and releases.

In software development, version control is a class of systems responsible for managing changes to computer programs or other collections of information such that revisions have a logical and consistent organization. The following tables include general and technical information on notable version control and software configuration management (SCM) software. For SCM software not suitable for source code, see Comparison of open-source configuration management software.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNU Bazaar</span> Version control system

GNU Bazaar is a distributed and client–server revision control system sponsored by Canonical.

A software repository, or repo for short, is a storage location for software packages. Often a table of contents is also stored, along with metadata. A software repository is typically managed by source or version control, or repository managers. Package managers allow automatically installing and updating repositories, sometimes called "packages".

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In FOSS development communities, a forge is a web-based collaborative software platform for both developing and sharing computer applications.

In version control software, a changeset is a set of alterations packaged together, along with meta-information about the alterations. A changeset describes the exact differences between two successive versions in the version control system's repository of changes. Changesets are typically treated as an atomic unit, an indivisible set, by version control systems. This is one synchronization model.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GitHub</span> Hosting service for software projects

GitHub is a developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage and share their code. It uses Git software, providing the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous integration, and wikis for every project. Headquartered in California, it has been a subsidiary of Microsoft since 2018.

Plastic SCM is a cross-platform commercial distributed version control tool developed by Códice Software for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and other operating systems. It includes a command-line tool, native GUIs, diff and merge tool and integration with a number of IDEs. It is a full version control stack not based on Git.

References

  1. "SVNBook" . Retrieved 2012-04-20.
  2. "Version control concepts and best practices". 2018-03-03. Archived from the original on 2020-04-27. Retrieved 2020-07-10.
  3. "Getting Started - About Version Control". Git SCM.
  4. Ben Collins-Sussman; Brian W. Fitzpatrick; C. Michael Pilato (2011). "Chapter 5: Strategies for Repository Deployment". Version Control with Subversion: For Subversion 1.7. O'Reilly.
  5. "Different approaches to source control branching". Stack Overflow. Retrieved 15 November 2014.
  6. "GitHub Pages | Websites for you and your projects, hosted directly from your GitHub repository". GitHub.