Highlight #1 Version Control System
Version control systems are a category of software tools that help a software team manage changes to source code over time. Version control software keeps track of every modification to the code in a special kind of database. If a mistake is made, developers can turn back the clock and compare earlier versions of the code to help fix the mistake while minimizing disruption to all team members. For almost all software projects, the source code is like the crown jewels - a precious asset whose value must be protected. For most software teams, the source code is a repository of the invaluable knowledge and understanding about the problem domain that the developers have collected and refined through careful effort. Version control protects source code from both catastrophe and the casual degradation of human error and unintended consequences. Version control helps teams solve these kinds of problems, tracking every individual change by each contributor and helping prevent concurrent work from conflicting.
Highlight #2 Centralized Version Control System
Centralized version control systems are based on the idea that there is a single "central" copy of your project somewhere (probably on a server), and programmers will "commit" their changes to this central copy. "Committing" a change simply means recording the change in the central system. Other programmers can then see this change. They can also pull down the change, and the version control tool will automatically update the contents of any files that were changed. Most modern version control systems deal with "changesets", which simply are a groups of changes (possibly to many files) that should be treated as a cohesive whole. Programmers no longer have to keep many copies of files on their hard drives manually, because the version control tool can talk to the central copy and retrieve any version they need on the fly.
Highlight #3 Distributed Version Control System
Where CVCS has a single repository of files to be accessed by users, DVCS replicates the repository of files onto each user’s machine. Each replicated repository has a full history of the project with all of the metadata of the original. This makes version control with DVCS self-contained in that a user doesn't need to be connected to the central repository in order to perform version control tasks locally. Distributed revision control systems (DVCS) takes a peer-to-peer approach to version control, as opposed to the client–server approach of centralized systems. Distributed revision control synchronizes repositories by exchanging patches from peer to peer. There is no single central version of the codebase; instead, each user has a working copy and the full change history.
Highlight #4 Git
Git is a mature, actively maintained open source project originally developed in 2005 by Linus Torvalds, the famous creator of the Linux operating system kernel. A staggering number of software projects rely on Git for version control, including commercial projects as well as open source. Developers who have worked with Git are well represented in the pool of available software development talent and it works well on a wide range of operating systems and IDEs (Integrated Development Environments). Having a distributed architecture, Git is an example of a DVCS (hence Distributed Version Control System). Rather than have only one single place for the full version history of the software as is common in once-popular version control systems like CVS or Subversion (also known as SVN), in Git, every developer's working copy of the code is also a repository that can contain the full history of all changes. In addition to being distributed, Git has been designed with performance, security and flexibility in mind.
Highlight #5 Github
GitHub is a repository hosting service. Think of it as the "cloud" for code. GitHub will host your source code projects in a variety of different programming languages and keep track of the various changes made to every iteration. It is able to do this by using git, a revision control system that runs in the command line interface. Using GitHub has numerous benefits including easier collaboration with colleagues and peers, ability to look back on previous versions, and tons of easy integration options.