The term source control or revision control refers to any software aimed at making development in practice both simpler and safer for as many people as possible. In short, it allows you to track and undo changes to your files easily and quickly, as well as share these changes with others. Typically, software development (including game development) relies on two important facts or ingredients. First, it’s a collective effort where multiple developers work together as part of a team, either at the same physical location (such as an office) or across distant locations but sharing a virtual space (such as a virtual office, forum, or even e-mail). Second, during development, developers will tweak, edit, and make improvements to the source code. From these two seemingly simple facts comes a range of important needs that revision control aims to satisfy.

These needs are as follows: