Source Management Tools

Here are some different source management tools commonly used with Linux:

Overview

 * David Wheeler has an excellent breakdown of various SCM tools at: http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/scm.html
 * IBM has an good overview of available tools at: http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-vercon/
 * There is a comparison of several different tools at: http://better-scm.berlios.de/comparison/comparison.html

Patch Management Tools

 * diff - to create patches
 * use 'man diff' on your local system for information
 * patch - to apply patches
 * use 'man patch' on your local system for information
 * Quilt is good for managing a group of patches relative to a single source base.
 * diffstat reads a patch file (or standard input) and displays a histogram of the insertions, deletions, and modifications per-file. It is useful for reviewing large, complex patch files. It reads from one or more input files or from standard input. If an input filename ends with .bz2, .Z or .gz, diffstat will read the uncompressed data via a pipe from the corresponding program.
 * diffstat is included in most Linux distributions
 * diffstat home page
 * diffstat man page
 * Tim's patch management tools - diffinfo and friends - a more verbose diffstat, with splitting, joining and comparing of patches
 * See also Diff And Patch Tricks
 * Splash - Sony tool for managing patches (kind of like quilt or stacked git)

Version Control Systems

 * Git
 * Subversion
 * BitKeeper

Identity Verification, text validation

 * PgpKey