Distributed Revision Control
Distributed revision control systems (DRCS) take a peer-to-peer approach, as opposed to the client-server approach of centralized systems. Rather than a single, central repository on which clients synchronize, each peer's working copy of the codebase is a bona-fide repository. Distributed revision control conducts synchronization by exchanging patches (change-sets) from peer to peer. This results in some important differences from a centralized system:
- No canonical, reference copy of the codebase exists by default; only working copies.
- Common operations (such as commits, viewing history, and reverting changes) are fast, because there is no need to communicate with a central server.
Rather, communication is only necessary when pushing or pulling changes to or from other peers.
- Each working copy effectively functions as a remote backup of the codebase and of its change-history, providing inherent protection against data loss.
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