“The Cathedral or The Bazaar”: Version Control — Centralized or Distributed?

Stanislav Fomin

Stanislav Fomin

Almost forty years have passed since the first source code version control systems were created. During that time many VCS (Version Control Systems) were created, each of them had its own advantages and drawbacks, and version control became an indispensable practice of competent development.

Why we still don’t have one consistent and ideal VCS? As it happens, one of the reasons is that even without restricting to the features of particular VCS, the argument between two essentially different version control paradigms (centralized and distributed) is taking place.

Centralized approach is still more popular, but an army of the distributed VCS supporters is also growing.

What approach is the best choice for corporate software development? We’ll discuss the basic “rubs” in the argument between centralized and distributed VCS’s, will analyse their advantages and drawbacks in the context of corporate development, and, finally, will propose how to combine the best from both approaches and avoid their inherent problems.