Obsidian — Custom Plugins Part 4

Version Control

A version control system is a necessary technology to have if you’re programming and still valid even if not. If you’re interested in Obsidian, then you’re already on the path to appreciating the usefulness and simplicity of plain text files and editing, even if just on a back end of a friendly interface. This is where accurate version control shines in keeping track of the history of plain text and how things get updated. It’s more sophisticated than that, but for our purposes, that’s enough. You can think of it like the save history in a Google doc, or even Obsidians own Sync history. It’s more sophisticated because it depends on interrelated files and assets. It’s critical when working in teams, so things don’t get lost between people working on the same stuff, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t help work alone on projects.

Git

There are many version control systems, each with advantages and disadvantages and valuable for different types of projects. The most popular one by far today is Git, developed by Linus Torvalds (who also developed Linux). Git is the one you should use for many reasons, such as the same with Javascript; it’s ubiquitous and used in so many places. So will form a strong foundation if you want to expand into other types of version control. But it’s also explicitly used by Obsidian developers. The Obsidian tool is not open source (maybe one of the main drawbacks that could make it closer to perfect), but the plugin architecture is. If you’re interested in your plugin being available in the directory, you will need to learn the basics of Git.

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