Source control is a non-negotiable facet of enterprise software development, not just for its use as a code repository but for the possibilities it enables in terms of continuous integration, distributed teams, code reviews and overall peace of mind.

There are a large number of source control systems out there with the newer systems being based on a distributed rather than a centralised revision control paradigm. While I have used subversion for many years, the enhancements provided by DVCS products like GIT and Mercurial (Hg) have completely won me over for all projects going forward, as Joel Spolsky said “If you are using Subversion, stop it. Just stop”.

As I develop software mostly on windows and the .NET platform I find that Mercurial is substantially easier to install and use than GIT when you need to have a local server (which is pretty common for an enterprise team). However I strongly suggest you install and become familiar with both as there is a significant amount of .NET open source software available on github (http://www.github.com) that you really want to be able to use, much more so than on bitbucket (http://www.bitbucket.org) the mercurial equivalent.

I would also highly recommend reading Joel Spolsky’s tutorial on using Mercurial, its a fantastic introduction to using a DVCS, especially if you have used subversion in the past. Also take a look at the GIT book.