Version management



If you are a programmer working in a team you are bound to use a version management system.  There is some „base” or „origin” - or whatever name it has - starting point. You check out the files you need, make some changes, then merge it back and if everything is fine check them back. This is simple and straightforward but why all the fuss? Couldn’t be it simpler? Let’s say we also have the same base nicely located in some internet folder.  All you see – and you don’t need to see more - a set of files making up a project.  No checkout and upload or anything. If you are finished you stop working and report being ready.  If all the team is ready the team leader gives it a label and deletes – if he wants – the history between two labels. All that should happen without thinking about it.  Why make it more complicated?
And what happens if two start working on the same files?  Google Docs and Office 365 provide a solution for long. You see the changes of others in your document live. I accept that it may be annoying for both parties at first, but in fact it would support teamwork. You see immediately what happens in the code, what the others are working on.  The only catch I see in testing, e.g. you want to do a testz run but another colleague is just making a change which prohibits compiling. The solution could be to let the compiler regard only your code and leave the decision in your hand when to import the changes done by others. The temptation to improve the code made by the colleagues maybe a problem at least in the beginning though. (I’m sure some people working this way would write fairly modular code, just for not being permanently "supervised" by other team members.)
Using this method you can’t open many branches. (Actually there are no branches). It would be problematic if there are really different versions (e.g. standard and professional variant of an application). However that should be solved on the same codebase, or making a fork. Neither seems it to be able of managing large projects, but I'm not sure.

Some links:
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