Timey-Wimey Ball: Difference between revisions

Line 334:

* [[wikipedia:Git (software)|Git]]. Git is a version control system. Like all version control systems, Git allows you to store files in time: essentially, taking a snapshot of a directory at a particular point and allowing you to roll back to it. Like any VCS, it can store many such snapshots. And, as with many VCS schemes, you can go backwards in time and start a new branch of changes relative to that particular time. With most VCS schemes, history can be branched, and created, but never modified or destroyed. Not so in Git, which allows you to go back in time and ''change'' what used to be there, rewriting past changes. What happens in the future, when changes have been made based on those previous changes? You get the Timey Whimey Ball in your ''source code'', and now have to go through and figure out how to undo the horror you may have created.

** Fortunately, Git preserves even changes to history (perhaps in a form of [[San Dimas Time]]), so you can revert your edits to history.

*** Unfortunately, unlike saner ~~[[DVC Ses]]~~, it then voluntarily discards some parts of the history just before you want to look it up (if you merge two branches and later split them again, you have little chances to know what was originally where after a month or so)

*** Unfortunately, unlike saner DVCSes, it then voluntarily discards some parts of the history just before you want to look it up (if you merge two branches and later split them again, you have little chances to know what was originally where after a month or so)

**** Yeah, git filter-branch is fun times in a large organization. It takes a while to get settled back into one timeline. Let's just note that Linus named git [[Self-Deprecation|after himself]].