In the previous module, you learned general informatics principles for naming, documenting, and organizing your data. With that background, you are now ready to learn about documenting the provenance (history) of your data and scripts with version control systems. You can think of version control systems as a formal tool for implementing FAIR informatics principles: By posting your project on a version control site, you make it findable, accessible, and reusable.

Version control is important because it can prevent you from losing your work, or help you discover when a mistake was introduced. Good version control accomplishes these goals by allowing you to explore previous versions of your project, and selectively restore all or part of a project.

I've found so many interesting projects on Github: from AMICO-NODDI to Bashcrawl. I want to make sure you know the resource is there.

I also rest easy knowing that the scripts and tools I write are backed up on GIT cloud repositories like Bitbucket, Github, or Gitlab.

Finally, github.io allows you to publish websites (like the MRI virtual tour), all for free!

Goals This module introduces you to GIT, and the related Datalad. You can use these tools to organize your own projects AND you can find GIT and Datalad repositories online that you can download and use freely.

Module Description This module "explains version control systems". Version control is a particular approach to data management. The emphasis is on tracking and annotating changes so you can roll back those changes if necessary. The well-known version control tool GIT facilitates tracking text files (like code) and is very useful for teams. Datalad is less well-known, but it is especially good at handling large files, like images, which would overwhelm a traditional GIT repository. There will be practice for Git, and DataLad.

The Version Control module consists of 4 assignments: 3 lessons (2 of which are practices), and a quiz.

Version Control 1