Chapter 3: Using Source Code Control Effectively

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Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

—George Santayana

Overview

If Santayana were writing computer books, he might have put that a little differently: Those who cannot remember the source code are compelled to re-create it. We live in a world where things go wrong. Hard drives crash, taking precious files with them. Libraries change their interfaces. The brilliant idea you had at 3 a.m. looks a lot stupider after some sleep, and you’re faced with ripping out all that code you wrote last night. For these reasons, and many others, any serious software project must use source code control.

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