Centralized Version Control Systems

Centralized version control system (CVCS) uses a central server to store all files and enables team collaboration. It works on a single repository to which users can directly access a central server.

Please refer to the diagram below to get a better idea of CVCS:

The repository in the above diagram indicates a central server that could be local or remote which is directly connected to each of the programmer’s workstation.

Every programmer can extract or update their workstations with the data present in the repository or can make changes to the data or commit in the repository. Every operation is performed directly on the repository.

Even though it seems pretty convenient to maintain a single repository, it has some major drawbacks. Some of them are:

It is not locally available; meaning you always need to be connected to a network to perform any action.

Since everything is centralized, in any case of the central server getting crashed or corrupted will result in losing the entire data of the project.

This is when Distributed VCS comes to the rescue.