Bitbucket - The Introduction

Bitbucket is a web-based version control repository hosting service. Primarily used by software development teams. It provides tools for hosting, managing, and collaborating on code repositories using

• Git
• Mercurial which are distributed version control systems.

Table of contents

What is VCS ?

• A Version Control System (VCS), also known as a Source Code Management (SCM) system or Revision Control system, is a software tool, helps developers manage changes to their code and collaborate with others effectively.
• Provides a way to track the history of changes made to a codebase, manage different versions of files, and coordinate multiple contributors working on the same project.
• The primary goal is to facilitate collaborative development while maintaining a clear and organized history of code changes.

Types of VCS

There are two types of VCS:

• Centralised VCS: A single central repository stores the entire history and codebase and developers interact with this central repository to check out code, make changes, and commit their work. Subsequent changes are made directly to the central repository, and developers must synchronize their work with it regularly to ensure they have the latest changes and to contribute their own changes.

• Distributed VCS: Allows multiple developers to collaborate on a codebase without relying on a single central repository and each developer has their own complete copy of the entire code repository, including the full version history. This enables more flexible and decentralized collaboration, as developers can work independently, make changes, and synchronize their repositories with others without needing a constant connection to a central server.

Git VS Bitbucket

• Git and Bitbucket are related but serve different purposes in the context of software development.
• Git is a distributed version control system, while Bitbucket is a web-based platform that provides hosting, collaboration, and additional tools around version control, primarily for Git repositories.

Differences between Github & Bitbucket

As you can see, both are really great at most of the things, choosing between these two, is actually hard, depending on your projects & company budgets.

Basic Terminology

• Fork : Forking a project enables a user to have a personal copy of a remote repository, or another user’s repository. It allows users to experiment with changes in the project, without altering the original project. Forking is a crucial part of open-source collaboration because it enables developers to contribute to projects and maintains a clear separation between your work and the project owner’s work.

• Clone : Aids in downloading an existing Git Repository in Bitbucket, GitHub, and so on, to your local machine.

• Add : To add newly created or modified files to the index for the Git to track, add is used.

• Commit : Helps in recording changes to the repository, since the previous commit.

• Push : Refers to the process of sending all your local committed changes to a remote repository hosted in Bitbucket or GitHub.

• Fetch : Fetch aids in downloading the latest commits, files and references from the remote repository. It enables a user to know what the other users have been working on, after the user has cloned the repository into their local machine

• Pull : Refers to the process of fetching changes and merging them from remote to local, so that the local repository is up to date.

How Bitbucket works

Creation of Repository & hosting

• Repositories are created either by starting a new one or importing an existing repository from their local machine or another version control system.
• Hosts these repositories in the cloud, providing a centralized location for storing and managing code.

Collaboration & contribution

• Collaborate on code changes by making commits to their local repositories and push commits to the Bitbucket repository.
• This action makes the changes available for collaboration and review by others.

Pull requests & code review

• Developers use branches to work on specific features, bug fixes, or improvements and create pull requests (PRs) to propose their changes for inclusion in the main branch of the repository.
• Pull requests provide a space for discussion, code review, and feedback from team members. Reviewers can comment on the code and suggest changes.

Code Quality and Continuous Integration

• It integrates with built-in CI/CD solution, called Bitbucket Pipelines where developers can define automated pipelines in the bitbucket-pipelines.yml configuration file.
• Pipelines include steps for building, testing, and deploying the code changes. Automated tests can be run on each push, ensuring code quality and identifying potential issues.

Deployment and Integration

• After code changes are done then pass through the CI/CD pipeline and be deployed to different environments, such as development, staging, and production.
• Bitbucket integrates with other tools, such as Jira for issue tracking and Confluence for documentation, providing a comprehensive development ecosystem.

Visibility and Monitoring

• It provides insights into code activity, such as commits, pull requests, and code reviews by which teams can track changes, monitor contributions.

CLI with Bitbucket

Clone a repository from Bitbucket

$ git clone <Bitbucket_repo_url>

Add file to the index

$ git add <file_name>

Commit the changes

$ git commit -m <log-message> <filename>

Pull changes from remote reference

$ git pull

Push changes to BitBucket

$ git push <remote> <local-branch-name>[:<new-remote-branch-name>]

Bitbucket Server

• It is formerly known as Stash, a self-hosted, web-based platform for version control and collaboration which is primarily used for Git repositories.

• Has built-in Apache Maven. Also enables users to do basic Git operations and helps in hosting your own server.

• Bitbucket Server offers a Data Center edition, which is designed for large enterprises with advanced clustering and high availability requirements.

Bitbucket Pipelines

The above image shows some of the tools that are integrated for automation of CI/CD pipeline.

CI/CD Pipelines

• To deliver a software successfully, developers must connect multiple tools, followed by writing the pipeline for it.
• Automating CI/CD pipeline is always an ingredient in the too hard basket.

In Bitbucket Pipelines

• It is a Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) solution which is built directly into Bitbucket for version control and collaboration.
• This Pipelines allows software development teams to define, automate, and execute their entire software development workflow, from code changes to deployment, within the Bitbucket platform.
• In here pipelines are triggered automatically whenever changes are pushed to a repository the CI/CD pipeline defined in the bitbucket-pipelines.yml file is automatically executed.

Final Takeaway

• Bitbucket is more than just Git code management.
• It provides software development teams with a comprehensive platform for managing their codebase and collaborating effectively.
• In essence, Bitbucket streamlines the process of version control, code review, code collaboration and continuous integration or continuous deployment.

I hope this helps !! Thanks for reading …