My Journey at LuxDevHQ: Version Control (The Basics)

Source: Dev.to

Introduction

In a previous post we set up a Windows virtual machine using VirtualBox, preparing us to start data‑science projects.

Data science, like most tech fields, ultimately revolves around code and data files. This raises several questions:

• How do we store them?
• How do we track changes?
• How can we access them from different machines?
• How can we share them with collaborators?

Version control answers all of these.

Version Control / Source Control

Version Control – “the practice of tracking and managing changes to software code.”¹

It is a mechanism for keeping a history of changes made to computer files—especially source‑code files—allowing you to view old versions and, if needed, revert to a previous state.

Early attempts at collaboration relied on pendrives, email attachments, and shared folders. Those methods were clunky:

• No built‑in way to identify who made which changes and when.
• Naming conventions like project, project1, project‑latest proliferated.
• Accidental overwrites were common, often resulting in lost work.

These pain points led to the rise of Version Control Systems (VCS)—software tools that automatically track and manage changes to files.

Benefits

• Automated history – every update to the codebase is recorded.
• Safe collaboration – work together without fearing permanent overwrites.
• Easy rollback – revert individual files or the entire project to a prior state.
• Structured audit trail – a clear, chronological view of the project’s evolution.

Popular VCS tools

• Mercurial
• Subversion (SVN)
• Fossil
• CVS

The most widely used—and the focus of this article and of LuxDevHQ—is Git (git‑scm.com).

Git

Git is a lightning‑fast, free, and open‑source distributed version‑control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.² It was originally created by Linus Torvalds—the creator of Linux—as version control for the Linux kernel. Today, over 93 % of developers worldwide use Git¹. It runs on all major operating systems and can be used inside containers such as Docker.

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Installation

General installation instructions are available on the official site: .

Windows

1. Visit the Windows installer page: .

2. Download the latest installer (e.g., Git-2.52.0-64-bit.exe):

   

3. Run the installer, accept the UAC prompt, and follow the Git Setup Wizard.
   The default options work for most users; you can adjust any setting you prefer.

4. When the installation finishes, keep Launch Git Bash checked, uncheck View Release Notes, and click Finish.

   

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Initial Setup

Configure your identity globally (these values can be overridden per‑repository).

# Set your name
git config --global user.name "Your Name"

# Set your email address
git config --global user.email "you@example.com"

Verify the settings:

git config --list

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Creating a Repository

1. Create a project folder

   mkdir -p test-project
   cd test-project

2. Add a README

   touch README.md
   echo "This is a test project showing how to set up a Git repository." >> README.md

   Verify its contents:

   cat README.md

3. Add a sample Python script

   touch test.py && echo "print('Hello, World')" >> test.py

4. Check the directory contents

   ls .

   You should see README.md and test.py.

5. Initialize the repository

   git init

6. Stage the files

   git add .

7. Commit with a message

   git commit -m "Initial commit"

Your local repository is now ready to be pushed to a remote service (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, etc.).

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References

Footnotes

1. Definition adapted from various software engineering sources. ↩ ↩²

2. Git. (2026‑01‑18). Git. https://git-scm.com ↩