---
title: Version Control systems
permalink: /modules/3/version-control-systems.html
---

As best practice for software development, source code is stored on repositories tracked by **version control systems**, which allows for managing software changes over time. This is extremely important for teams of multiple people, but also for a single developer it provides several benefits, including the ability to back up the code, to mark changes and histories, and recover past versions.

<a title="Edubevi / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vcs_distribuit.png"><img width="256" alt="Vcs distribuit" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/13/Vcs_distribuit.png"></a>

ROS packages are mostly on [github.com](github.com). As such, it is fundamental to learn the basics of version control systems, in particular `git`, which we will briefly cover in the [next unit]({{ site.baseurl }}{% link _modules/mod-3b-git.md %}).


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