Sharing Your Software

01 Sep 2016

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Configuration management is important for Software Engineering because it allows groups of people to efficiently maintain the files for projects. I agree that software hosting platforms are very useful when collaborating with multiple people, but it comes with its disadvantages. If one or more users are not familiar with a particular software hosting platform, then it can cause some confusion within the group. Not knowing how to use the features of the software hosting platform can increase the amount of time spent on trying to manage the files. I spent about one hour trying to figure out how to access the files of the repository to submit this essay.

To be honest I have never heard of git before taking this Software Engineering class. So I am not sure which gained its popularity because of the other, GitHub or git. I have heard of GitHub in the past but I did not know anything about it, just the name. Not being familiar with git and GitHub can be attributed to the lack of need of the software hosting platform in the past.

The features that many of these software hosting platforms provide can make life easier for the users. We were required to download GitHub Desktop and configure it to be able to access the our GitHub repository files. Using GitHub Desktop we are able to edit and create new files for the repository from our computers without having to change things in the repository directly. GitHub Desktop also keeps track of the history of changes made to the repository, noting down the file that was changed and the time that it was changed at. Another interesting part about GitHub is that it still can be useful for individuals that are not in need of sharing files to collaborate with a group. Any person can utilize GitHub to simply manage their files and update them as necessary. These software hosting platforms are very diverse and can be used for almost anything.