How does Databricks handle versioning of notebooks or jobs, and what good practices should newcomers

[Suheb]

When you create notebooks or jobs in Databricks, how does Databricks keep track of different versions or changes? And what should beginners do to manage versions safely and effectively?

[szymon_dybczak]

Hi @Suheb ,

Best practice for versioning your assets is to use git folders. This is recommended approach:

What is Databricks Git folders | Databricks on AWS

But out of the box databricks provides for you some versioning capabilities if you don't want to configure git integration for now.

[bianca_unifeye]

Hi @Suheb,

That’s a great question, version control is one of the most important things to get right early on.

As a best practice, you should never run notebooks directly in production. Instead, notebooks should be treated as development assets, once validated, they should be packaged, version-controlled, and deployed through proper CI/CD.

1. Use Git integration

• Databricks integrates directly with GitHub, Azure DevOps and GitLab.

• Always link your workspace to a Git repo and commit your notebook changes regularly, this keeps full version history and supports collaboration.

2. Package and deploy, don’t run manually

• Convert notebooks into production-ready code (Python modules or .py scripts).

• Use Databricks Asset Bundles (DAB) or your CI/CD pipeline to deploy jobs, pipelines, and workflows, not raw notebooks.

• This ensures environments (Dev, Test, Prod) stay consistent and auditable.

3. Automate with Workflows

• Use Jobs or Workflows to orchestrate your pipelines instead of manual runs.

• Parameters, retries, and alerts can all be managed centrally.

4. Keep documentation handy

• Databricks provides extensive documentation for both Git integration and CI/CD with DAB, plenty of examples depending on your setup (GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, etc.).

In short:

Develop in notebooks, version in Git, deploy with DAB, and run in production via Jobs/Workflows never directly from a notebook.