Editing Version control (section)

===File locking===
The simplest method of preventing "[[concurrent access]]" problems involves [[file locking|locking files]] so that only one developer at a time has write access to the central "[[Repository (version control)|repository]]" copies of those files. Once one developer "checks out" a file, others can read that file, but no one else may change that file until that developer "checks in" the updated version (or cancels the checkout).

File locking has both merits and drawbacks.  It can provide some protection against difficult merge conflicts when a user is making radical changes to many sections of a large file (or group of files). If the files are left exclusively locked for too long, other developers may be tempted to bypass the revision control software and change the files locally, forcing a difficult manual merge when the other changes are finally checked in. In a large organization, files can be left "checked out" and locked and forgotten about as developers move between projects - these tools may or may not make it easy to see who has a file checked out.