1.6 Collaborative Software Development

 Version control systems are tools that help manage changes of files over time. Most importantly, version control systems enable efficient collaboration for those people contributing to a project. Imagine you and your team are working on a development project. Without version control systems, you are probably working with shared folders containing the whole project and possibly replicating it a few times in another location as a backup. In a situations like this, multiple people on your team may work on the same file at the same time, potentially causing many issues. These problems are mitigated by using a version control system.

Generally, software development is a collaborative process:

• Using and contributing to software libraries from other developers

• Tracking bugs and feature requests from users

• Assisting operations and testing teams

• Multiple developers working as a team

You can use tools such as issue trackers and version control systems to help you organize development work and collaborate effectively with others.

Version control software keeps track of every modification of the code. If a mistake is made, developers can look back and compare earlier versions of code to help fix the mistake, minimizing disruption to all team members. Version control protects source code from any kind of errors that may have serious consequences if not handled properly.

So, when should you use version control? In reality, version control should be used for any engineering-related project; it does not have to specifically be for code management. Regardless of the file types being used, version control proves to be valuable for team-based projects in which they require error tackling, code backup and recovery, code history, change logging, and an easier way to experiment with the code.

Version control systems can be useful not only for developers but for networking teams as well. For example, it is useful to have a history of all the configurations that are active on networking devices. Using a system such as Git allows you to see the configurations, how and when they change, and of course, who or which system made the change. Also, as more automation tooling is used—for example, Ansible—you can use Git to version control playbooks, variables, and configuration files. As you collect information from switches such as operational data, you can store that data in text files. You can easily track and see the changes in operational data, such as changing neighbor adjacencies, routes, and so on.