Any way to know if another developer is editing the same files?

Question

I am working with my teammates on the same WordPress project, but once in a while we face overriding each other's codes, mainly in functions.php or style.css files. I was wondering if there is any away to avoid such problems?

Answer 1

once a while we face overriding our codes by each other

When we fix or add something we may not like to first ask about 2 minutes for something that is done in just 5 minutes. But this gets a problem when multiple persons may work on same file and do not communicate about their work.

Is there a way to know if someone else is editing same functions

You can use any of below ways:

• Recommended: use any sub-version control system like Git or SVN, and work only on your own branch (i.e. create a branch even for a single method/function and merge latter, but you also need to communicate about like: will create a branch and work on ...).

• You could use an IDE that has a plugin that adds the feature to show other developers actions (e.g. a separate text-cursor with remote-Developer's name above it, like "Google documents").

  For example, VS Code has the so-called "Live share" extension:
  https://code.visualstudio.com/learn/collaboration/live-share

  Or, develop a plugin that does add such feature to your IDE, as most IDE's provide SDK.

• Actively use communication method's in an advanced way (e.g. like working on exactly some file over LAN, some software do support that).