Version control for strategy research

Use commits, experiment notes, and configuration hashes to know exactly which code produced a trading result.

Code and results evolve together

A strategy result is meaningful only in the context of the code and settings that produced it. Commit changes before running an important experiment and store the commit or version label with the report.

Do not edit a historical report to make it match a newer implementation. Create a new result and explain the difference.

Write useful commit messages

A commit message should say what changed in the research or execution behaviour: changed session filter, fixed stop calculation, added slippage model, or updated data cleaning. ‘Tweaks’ does not help a future review.

Keep strategy logic and unrelated formatting changes separate.
Tag versions that reach demo or live testing.
Store configuration files with the code they belong to.
Review the diff before trusting a new backtest.

Reproducibility beats nostalgia

When a result looks different later, version control lets you identify whether the cause was code, data, dependencies, or configuration. That is much faster than trying to remember what changed.

Keep credentials and private account data out of the repository while making non-secret configuration easy to share.

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