A practitioner's history of source control: From CVS to Git and thirty years of version control
By
EvilGenius
Sesame, salt, and substance. A flagship bake.
Summary
A practitioner's first-hand history of source control systems from 1990 to present, covering CVS, SourceSafe, Subversion, BitKeeper, and Git. The author recounts personal experiences with each system, including data loss incidents, and explains how Git emerged from BitKeeper's license revocation in 2005. The article reflects on why Git has remained dominant for over two decades with no serious successor, while acknowledging its flaws and the lessons learned from earlier systems.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledIn April 2005, Linus Torvalds wrote Git in ten days because BitKeeper revoked its free licence to the Linux kernel.
Twenty-one years later, no successor has emerged.
A practitioner's history of source control from someone who used every major system since 1990, and lost code in most of them.
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