20 Aug Technical Documentation: Benefits of Version Control System (VCS)
Version control is a system to manage updates in a document. The stored history helps stakeholders understand who made what type of changes in which release. It is also named as source control or revision control.
In this article:
What is VCS?
What are the popular VCS?
What are the benefits of using VCS?
What are the popular VCS?
What are the benefits of using VCS?
Types of VCS
- Distributed Version Control Systems (DVCS)
- Centralized Version Control Systems (CVCS)
- Other Systems
Examples of VCS
Git, Subversion (SVN), Mercurial, Plastic SCM, CVS (Concurrent Versions System), Bazaar, TFS (Team Foundation Server), Perforce (Helix Core), ClearCase
Benefits of Using Track Versions
- History and Knowledge Management: Available timelines with details of all updates make it easy to study valuable insights. Unwanted changes can be reverted to maintain accuracy.
- Collaboration: Multiple writers avoid conflicts using the latest version when working on larger projects.
- Accountability: Easier to identify who made a change helps find out who made the change and when.
- Compliance Requirement: With a complete history and record of every update, helps auditing and enables compliance with standards and regulations.
- Content Consistency: Helps to identify the updated content and avoid inconsistencies between different versions
- Automation: Automated workflows can be defined to enable automated testing, building and deployment of documentation. For this, some version control systems integrate with continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines.
- Backup and Recovery: The previous version acts as the saving grace if the current version is unusable.
- Enhanced Trust: Ensuring a professional approach to documentation, the version control system instills confidence in stakeholders.
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