Knowledge Bank

'Version control' is the concept of tracking the changes that occur within documents. The primary principle of this is simply that if a document is updated, a record is kept that a new version of the document exists, whilst still retaining the old version. This means that a document can be reverted to an earlier version should a mistake have been made, or if the changes are no longer relevant. It also means that a history exists of the changes to a particular document.
This can be very useful during document development. It allows for preliminary development changes to be made, without ever needing to worry about overwriting the current 'master' document.
Subversion, a product by CollabNet (), is a version control system that provides a set of features needed for a centralised Version Control System.