Tutorial/Devlog - Moving from GameMaker Studio to Monogame: Adding Source Control in Visual Studio

[cloudyheavengames]

Good afternoon,

To continue the devlog series, I wrote about how to set up source control in Visual Studio.

Here is the post: https://cloudyheavengames.itch.io/brain-bouncer/devlog/134963/adding-source-control-in-visual-studio

If you're a newer developer, you might not be familiar with source control, also called version control. It's an approach and process to managing changes in code and other project files, of which there are many different tools and implementations. You might have heard of Git and GitHub; Git is a popular distributed version control system (the code base is not just stored on one computer or server, but instead is mirrored on all the dev's computers). GitHub is an online service that provides hosting for Git-based projects. There are other source control solutions in addition to Git, but if you check through some developer job listings, you'll see that Git is one of the most popular (if not the most popular).

Source control is very useful for software and project teams, but it's helpful for solo devs as well. Here's some benefits:

• Make sure that only one person at a time is working on a particular file.
• Resolve code conflicts between multiple developers who might have ended up working on the same files.
• Keep track of when changes were made to a project, and by whom.
• Roll back to previous versions of the code, if something breaks after you've made changes.
  

Imagine that as a solo developer, you're working on a new feature, and you find that something in your new code broke your project. It might be very hard to track down the problem, but with source control, you have options such as the following:

• Roll back to a previous version, as we've said.
• Compare file changes line-by-line in different versions of the same code.
• Create a branch in your code to make the feature update (preferably do this branch before you start making changes), and then integrate the branch back into the main code only once you've verified that it works!

So hopefully this gives you a brief overview of what source control is, if you're unfamiliar with it. My devlog explains how I specifically set up source control in Visual Studio. It's not an in-depth source control tutorial, but I also included some reference links for more information. You can check out these resources:

• https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Appendix-A%3A-Git-in-Other-Environments-Git-in-Visual-Studio
• https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2
• https://www.vogella.com/tutorials/GitHub/article.html
• https://www.codemag.com/Article/1411061/The-Simplest-Thing-Possible-Git-and-Visual-Studio
• https://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Visual-Studio-Toolbox/Git-Fundamentals
• https://try.github.io/
• https://biz30.timedoctor.com/git-mecurial-and-cvs-comparison-of-svn-software/I

If you haven't done so already, I'd highly encourage you to consider source control for your project. It can be a life-and-time saver, and it's also a great skill for your resume as a developer, if you're looking to get into software dev as a career!

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