Java Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 8.22 Showing the history of the entire project directory can give you a
broad understanding of how your code is evolving.
8.4 Summary
On the surface, the benefits of version control exist at the management layer.
There's safety in making sure you never lose your intellectual property through
rogue deletions or poor organization. There's also support for team develop-
ment, with automatic conflict resolution. There's accountability, with the infra-
structure for determining who made changes, when they made them, and why
they did so. The benefits for a professional development effort are significant.
And, in an ideal world, the addition of a version control system would be natural
and non-intrusive.
Dig a little deeper, and you'll find that version control has a huge benefit to
the software project's developers: It gives you a warehouse of historical data on
the lifecycle of your code. By tracking the history and development of the system,
and being able to see the fine-grained comments left by you and other developers
as you made changes, you can appreciate how to better drive the system forward.
IDEA
has implemented support for a few version control systems, provided an
extensible mechanism for users to integrate others, and supplied a home-grown
