Editing Version control (section)

{{Short description|Managing versions of source code or data}}
{{Redirect|Source control|other uses in medicine and environment|Source control (disambiguation)}}
{{Redirect|Revision control system|the software tool|Revision Control System}}
{{More citations needed |date=April 2011}} 

'''Version control''' (also known as '''revision control''', '''source control''', and '''source code management''') is the [[software engineering]] practice of controlling, organizing, and tracking different versions in history of [[computer file]]s; primarily [[source code]] [[text files]], but generally any type of file.

Version control is a component of [[software configuration management]].<ref name="Mercurial">{{cite book|last1=O'Sullivan|first1=Bryan|url=http://hgbook.red-bean.com/read/|title=Mercurial: the Definitive Guide|date=2009|publisher=O'Reilly Media, Inc.|isbn=978-0-596-55547-4|location=Sebastopol|access-date=4 September 2015|archive-date=8 December 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191208075704/http://hgbook.red-bean.com/read/|url-status=live}}</ref>

A ''version control system'' is a [[software tool]] that automates version control. Alternatively, version control is embedded as a feature of some systems such as [[word processor]]s, [[spreadsheet]]s, collaborative [[groupware|web docs]],<ref>{{Citation |url=https://support.google.com/docs/answer/190843 |title=See what's changed in a file |contribution=[[Google Docs]] |publisher=Google Inc. |access-date=2021-04-21 |archive-date=2022-10-06 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221006115757/http://support.google.com/docs/answer/190843 |url-status=live }}.</ref> and [[content management system]]s, e.g., [[Help:Page history|Wikipedia's page history]]. 

Version control includes viewing old versions and enables [[Reversion (software development)|reverting]] a file to a previous version.