Mastering Version Control: Your Ultimate Guide

Version control or source control is the practice of tracking and managing the changes made to the software code. Source code management or version control tools are the software that helps you keep track of every small change made to the codebase without making a huge effort.

1. GitHub

With 73 million users and 200 million repositories, GitHub is the world’s largest source code repository. It is one of the top three source code management tool for any DevOps engineer. It helps millions of developers seamlessly build, ship, and maintain their applications. Developers can make rapid iterations and do immediate rollback in a fallout scene.

Key features:

• Easy project management

• Source code management

• Increased safety of packages

• Collaborative coding style

• Efficient team management

• Code change tracking

2. BitBucket

BitBucket is another top-rated DevOps tool for source code management. Its primary goal tool is hosting the code, but it also comprises many advanced features. For example, developers can code, test, and deploy from this single platform. While GitHub is the first choice for many developers, BitBucket has made its way to market due to its private repositories and low cost.

Key features:

• Efficient review of source code and pull requests

• Lots of add-ons and integrations

• Code security with two-step verification

• Integrated CI/CD to build, test, and deploy

• Smart mirroring and issue checking facility

• Integrations for JIRA and Trello

3. GitLab

GitLab is a widely used DevOps code quality tool that helps developers deliver software rapidly. GitLab can be your all-in-one DevOps tool that can be used for planning, development, security, and monitoring. However, as it provides features related to code quality and monitoring, most developers choose it for source code management or version tracking.

Key features:

• Version control and repository management

• Issue tracking, monitoring, and rectification

• Code review and improvement suggestions

• Continuous integration and deployment

• Performance monitoring and development analytics

• Integration with various JIRA, Slack, Docker, Kubernetes, etc.