To learn about distributed version control systems (DVCS), I’ve been using bazaar on some small projects . I know these DVCSs are supposed to really shine in multi-developer environments spread out across the world but I have found that they offer an incredibly low barrier to entry for a single developer on his own box. This is the typical situation for a college student in computer science and many others as well.

An example could help here. I’m taking a networking class where a bit of code is provided in a framework and we need to use the code for our programs.

cd lab1
bzr init
bzr add
bzr checkin -m "Initial import" 

Done. This folder is now under version control.

When version control is this easy to setup and use, there’s no excuse for not using it.