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Version Control Safety


pctechtv

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Hi, I have just learned some things about version control. I find the concepts very useful, thing I have needed for a long time. I am using SourceTree for my version control program. I am interested in trying the Git GUI program as well. My question is when using version control software do you risk corrupting you file? I tested SourceTree on a FileMaker solution (file) I have. It worked, it made versions and I can revert to different ones. Is this absolutely safe for the file? It feels safe with text, because you see the content but with binary files it is non-evident how it makes the changes. This makes me feel like I could lose or corrupt the file. Also it makes me feel like I could hear a company like FileMaker or Adobe say “we don’t support that!”. Thanks

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Most repositories don't work all that well with binary files because they can't necessarily read the format. If a file gets changed they can save the new version of the file, but making incremental changes to binary files from a version control system doesn't really work unless that system specifically supports that file type and can read the binary data to understand the structure and what changed. There are document control systems, for example, that support things like Word documents and PDF files. Systems that are there for source code (plain text files) work fine for plain text, but not that great for binary things.

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  • 1 year later...

 

 

My question is, when using version control software do you risk corrupting you file?

I don't think so as that would be a serious bug in any version control software. Of course, bugs happen everywhere so you never have 100% guarantee but I've never experienced any kind of corruption.

 

 

but with binary files it is non-evident how it makes the changes. This makes me feel like I could lose or corrupt the file.

I've never seen corruption of binary files, either - it shouldn't happen. Sure, with binary files you lose the ability to merge, see diffs, etc. but the file changes are still kept reliably. Git is also not very efficient for versioning big binary files but that is a separate issue. Anyway, no need to worry about corruption.

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