For any pedes out of the loop, version control is like a time machine (or “tracked changes”) for code. Collaborating on any real software project, especially commercial, all but requires this so that multiple parts of the code can be worked on at once and carefully merged together into a working program.
IMO this is the first place investigators with any understanding of software at all would look. But it’s an important concept for everyone to understand, as it would be very suspicious if there were either mismatched versions on different machines or no trail of changes to the code.
Also important to know that we automatically assume that version 2.2 of something is a small change that fixes issues from version 2.1 but those two could be 100 percent different if the software company wanted it to be. Naming conventions are just tradition.
For any pedes out of the loop, version control is like a time machine (or “tracked changes”) for code. Collaborating on any real software project, especially commercial, all but requires this so that multiple parts of the code can be worked on at once and carefully merged together into a working program.
IMO this is the first place investigators with any understanding of software at all would look. But it’s an important concept for everyone to understand, as it would be very suspicious if there were either mismatched versions on different machines or no trail of changes to the code.
Also important to know that we automatically assume that version 2.2 of something is a small change that fixes issues from version 2.1 but those two could be 100 percent different if the software company wanted it to be. Naming conventions are just tradition.