Centralized Source Control Management

In traditional Source Control Management (SCM) systems, such as CVS and Subversion, which have long been the industry standards, your code was saved to a server. This server kept the entire history of your project. Developers working on the project could check out a snapshot of the project, make their changes, and commit back to the server. It enabled teams to work together and get an idea of what other people on the team were up to.

However, since all code was stored in a single repository, you had a problem if this repository became (temporarily) unreachable (for example, due to network problems) or, worse, when your repository or server became corrupted. Storing the entire history of your projects in a single place comes with the risk of losing everything. This model of version control is called a centralized version control system.