hints about managing multi-programmers projects

Hello, I was wondering about managing code source files between many programmers: should everyone "sign" in the code every modification he does? Should the file being modified by a programmer be locked to other programmers? Is there any utility which "syncronize" two text files? Would this be a semplification? And what's about the big opensource projects, where the files aren't lockable and parallel modifications are to be expected? I'm wondering myself managing thousand source files coming from the community....terrible!!:-)

Thanks

BrownB

I think one of the basic tools would be a revision control system. A programmer would commit code that passes the tests, and merging would mean no need for locking of files. Such a system would also handle "synchronisation" of source files, possibly by merging automatically if possible, and getting a programmer to resolve conflicts otherwise.