What I want to do next, is to look at how
version control systems actually work. We saw what they are. We
saw why they are useful. But how do they actually work?
And we're going to do that by starting from some essential
actions that version control systems perform. The first one is the
addition of files. So, when you use a version control system,
you can add a file to the repository. And at that
point the file will be accessible to other people who have access
to the repository. And now the fundamental action is commit.
When you change a file, a file that is already in
the repository, when you make some local changes to a
file that is already in the repository, you want then to
commit your changes to the central repository, so they can
become visible to all of the other users on the repository. Finally,
another fundamental action is the action of updating a file. If
we have a repository and someone else can modify the files
in the repository, I want to be able to get
the changes that other people made to the files in the
repository. And these are just three of the basic actions, but
there are many, many more. And we'll see several of those.