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Rough..This is for a general introduction to Source and the principles of version control..

Welcome to Source!

Source is a new Version Control server for Geographers in the University of Bristol. You can use Source to store and manage your source code and documents.

What is Version Control?

Put simply, version control systems help you keep track of the different versions of files--especially source code files--which change and evolve during the course of a project. Version control systems do much, much more for you besides, however. Source makes it easy to:

• Collaborate with other resourchers
• Package and make your code available for the RAE, for example
• Recover past versions of files (very useful for recovering from disasters!)
• Highlight differences between two versions of a file (very useful for finding bugs)
• Keep a record of who made what changes and why
• Develop variants (branches) of your code simultaneously
• Work on your code from several different computers--without losing track of what the latest version is!

Wikipedia has a good introduction to the topic of version control, if you would like to find out more. Alternatively, you might like to skip straight on to learning how you can use Subversion--the version control package installed on Source.