10-Minute Guide to Git Version Control for Testers

Learn to use Git for work quickly

In my training, one of the early tasks is to teach the manual testers to use Git. Just like programmers’ code, automated test scripts need to be stored in a version control system. Git is the de-facto version control (also known as source control) system for source code.

Besides the obvious benefits of version control, such as

• sharing the updates among the team members
• traceability (who changed what)
• document history (also backups)
• …

For testers in a team, they get the latest automated test scripts (changes from others) via a version control system. There is also a need for automated testers to execute an automated test suite in a Continuous Testing (CT) server, and the CT server gets the latest automated test scripts and supporting data via a version control system like Git.

A typical topology of how CT works. Git (version control) is essential

Tip: Create a separate repository for automated test scripts only, do not mix with the source code, at least initially.