Design and Build Great Web APIs

Managing Files with Git

A critical element in doing any API work is managing all the project files. That means being able to track all the changes you make to your files, sharing them in a way that allows others on your team to also make their own changes without overwriting yours, and—in case of serious problems—the ability to reverse one or more of those changes in order to undo whatever mistakes were made in the recent past. This kind of work falls under the category of version control systems (VCS) or source code management (SCM).

Over the years, developers have seen several systems for managing code files. Concurrent Versions System (CVS) was released in 1990, and Perforce came out in 1995. Another product, Apache Subversion (or SVN), ...