1970s
Early source control
Tools such as SCCS record successive versions of source files. The focus is local traceability: what changed, and when?
Home / History
A short history
From file revisions to shared graphs
Version control grew from tracking one file on one machine into coordinating whole projects across many machines.
1980s
RCS and file-level history
RCS brings practical revision storage and locking to individual files. It solves a real problem, but a project is more than a collection of unrelated file histories.
1990s
CVS and shared development
Teams work against a shared repository. Branches, updates, and commits become part of everyday collaboration, while file-oriented limitations remain.
2000s
Subversion and repository-wide revisions
Subversion offers a centralized successor to CVS with atomic commits and a repository-wide revision number.
2005
Git and Mercurial
Distributed systems make local repository history and offline commits normal. Projects can exchange changes without one mandatory central server.
Later
Hosting becomes a workflow layer
Code review, automation, and permissions move into hosting platforms. The version control engine still records history; the platform organizes how a team accepts it.
Why it matters: newer does not automatically mean better for every team. Each generation optimized for a different combination of scale, availability, and coordination.