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Programming IT Technology

Windows Source Control for the Lone Developer? 109

Posted by Cliff from the version-control-on-a-budget dept.
bitFlipper asks: "I'm the sole developer of embedded software for a small company. Currently I'm maintaining about five different product lines, each with about 30K lines of code and 100+ files. At the moment I'm winging it without a version control system (using snapshots to CD-R), but this is an unhealthy state of affairs. The open source/big project model of many developers scattered across the globe doesn't apply here--it's just me. And since I have to provide my own tools, the budget for this is near zero. It also has to run on Win32. Oh, and the code I'm developing is not open source. I've looked at RCS (which is certainly simple, but maybe too simple) and Subversion (which is probably overkill). What can people recommend for a version control system that's free or low cost, Win32 compatible, and simple to set up, use and maintain?"
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Windows Source Control for the Lone Developer? More

Windows Source Control for the Lone Developer?

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  • Subversion (Score:2, Informative)

    by lightspawn ( 155347 )
    here. [tigris.org]

    • Re:Subversion (Score:5, Interesting)

      by lightspawn ( 155347 ) on Monday April 19, 2004 @08:39PM (#8911535) Homepage
      Sorry, I guess I should have explained. It's easy to set up - pretty straightforward if you only want to use it locally - it's as easy as

      svnadmin create dbname

      A huge plus is it's easy to export/import the database to a single (large) file, so you can actually see it does what it's supposed to.

      It's written by the people who used to maintain CVS before noticing how annoying it was.

      So it's not overkill, and satisfies all of your criteria.
      • i agree subversion is just cvs with a few nicieties:

        -http transmission of changes, cvs needs its own server subversion works under a regular web server
        -only sends diffs of files not the whole file every time

        commands are relatively similar

    • Another big plus to subversion under windows is TortoiseSVN.
      This client runs as a shell extension right in explorer, so now all your VCS commands are just a rightclick away. It also includes the ability of configuring what commands are nested in the Tortoise SVN submenu, and which are out on the main context menu. All the ease of use of winzip or powerarchiver for version control. It also adds useful columns to your details view, and has a handy repository browser.

      If you're on the go a lot and hop betwee
      • I use it not just for projects, but also for my thunderbird and firefox profiles [...], my mp3 collection, desktop, documents, pretty much everything i use on a daily basis.
        I was thinking of doing this, but is the space requirement of such a scheme justified? I never tried it, and I'd like to see some numbers. TIA!
        • The repository doesn't get too bulky, especially since it only stores patch files from one revision to the next, not complete copies. So things like mp3s only take up their normal filesize (about) in the repository, since they're unlikely to change.
          I don't know if subversion has any special handling of binary files, or if it just stores a whole copy each time (instead of the patches i know it does for text files).
          The real issue, is how long it takes to do your initial checkout. If possible, I try to do my
    • Without restating the original article?

  • CVS (Score:3, Interesting)

    by renehollan ( 138013 ) <rhollan@@@clearwire...net> on Monday April 19, 2004 @08:35PM (#8911505) Homepage Journal
    not the overkill of Subversion, and a bit dated, but it'll do.

    • Re:CVS (Score:5, Informative)

      by Arkham ( 10779 ) on Monday April 19, 2004 @09:01PM (#8911748)
      CVS (Concurrent Versioning System) is definitely the way to go.

      Here are some links to get you started:

      CVS On Windows [cvshome.org]

      WinCVS GUI (very nice, uses Python undeneath) [wincvs.org]

      Tortoise CVS [tortoisecvs.org]

      CVS NT Wiki [cvsnt.org]

      Component CVS for Windows [componentsoftware.com]

      All of these are CVS for Windows tools. CVS is a great revision control system.

      • Re:CVS (Score:3, Informative)

        by jgoemat ( 565882 )

        All of these are CVS for Windows tools. CVS is a great revision control system.

        If you don't have much command line experience they aren't that great. I had trouble getting WinCVS to run and the Tortoise shell integration wasn't great. I had trouble getting it working with my CVS server too, although the command line tools would work after I learned how to use them.

        We use SourceGear vault [sourcegear.com] at work and it works great. It integrates well with Visual Studio and the provided client is easy to use as well.

      • Re:CVS (Score:2)

        by Grab ( 126025 )
        I never really got on with WinCVS - I thought as a user interface it left a lot to be desired. TortoiseCVS has some problems, but it's easier to use on a day-to-day basis. In general, Tortoise's integration into Windows Explorer is really neat. I'm planning on trying Subversion at some point, but for the moment I don't see any point in messing with a working system. Maybe if I was starting over then I'd use Subversion - CVS has its, erm, "peculiarities", shall we say, so Subversion is probably a better
      • You seen to know quite a bit about CVS.
        We are having a problem with CVS at my work. There is a program which we have that is meant for generating HTML called RoboHelp HTML. When we generate our HTML help files, it ends up clearing all of the files (and directories) out of the generated directory and replacing them with "generated files". When it does this, it removes the important "CVS" directory that is in there, and replaces it with a copy of another "CVS" directory. It totally screws up CVS and we ne
        • Any ideas how to resolve this?

          Idea 1: Get RoboHelp fixed. A software tool shouldn't blindly erase subdirectories that it doesn't recognize.

          Idea 2: Since you probably can't really change RoboHelp, work around it. Don't let there be a CVS directory present when RoboHelp runs. Basically, create a script which creates a new temporary subdir, copies your input files there, runs robohelp on them, and then copies everything back out to where they really belong.

    • Re:CVS (Score:5, Informative)

      by smallfries ( 601545 ) on Monday April 19, 2004 @09:01PM (#8911750) Homepage
      CVS and subversion are just as complicated as each other. If anything, subversion is easier to use than CVS ever was, and certainly easier to administrate. You can't say that CVS is simpler than subversion as they follow the same model of use, but subversion is somewhat more streamlined and there are less gotcha's to bite you in the ass.
      • It also depends on what he is coding in, and what tools he is using. The thing that drives me up the wall with CVS is that it's hard to do moves and renames, both of which are crucial to refactoring-friendly languages like Java. Also the lack of atomic commits can be truely infuriating. Same with lack of change sets. You shouldn't pick a SCCS (source code control system) without understanding why all these things are good.

        However CVS does have whole lot more tools available for it than SVN does. Howe
    • I agree with the CVS recommendations. I use CVS under Win32 all the time for managing one-person, one-machine development projects.

      You can download CVSNT from this web site [cvsnt.org].


  • I have used PVCS in the past. Very good version control application. I am not sure about the cost though but benefits could outweigh cost. Here [merant.com] is the company website.

    • Re:PVCS (Score:2, Informative)

      by ducleotide ( 656390 )
      I disagree, PVCS is awful... it's expensive, the 'GUI' interface is not at all intuitive, the server is unreliable and it doesnt scale. It also lacks (or hard to find) a good diff'ing utility and a useful search utility.
      I prefer CVS with one of the gui add-ons like tortoise. In my opinion, the cost/benefit of CVS far outweighs PVCS. I have not used Subversion but hear great things about it.
      • I disagree, PVCS is awful... it's expensive, the 'GUI' interface is not at all intuitive, the server is unreliable and it doesnt scale. It also lacks (or hard to find) a good diff'ing utility and a useful search utility.
        I prefer CVS with one of the gui add-ons like tortoise. In my opinion, the cost/benefit of CVS far outweighs PVCS. I have not used Subversion but hear great things about it.

        I disagree. It is very intuitive and functional. It is used at more than 16,000 customer sites worldwide with more t
    • I've used CVS and Merant Dimensions (which is the 'grown up' version of PVCS).

      CVS doesn't come with a GUI, but WinCVS (+ others mentioned in this thread) are available. Overall, the quality of these GUIs is roughly in-line with Dimensions - i.e. not amazing but usable.

      The main difference between CVS and Dimensions is in their basic philosophy of what a version control system is for.

      CVS works on the basis that it lets you get on with whatever you want to do, and then tells you what you did. I.e., which fi
  • I would recommend using CVS [cvshome.org] and CVSTrac [cvstrac.org]. They both work fine under Windows (as servers). CVSTrac also gives you the benefit of browsing the code from the web, a bug tracker and a Wiki.
    • CVSTrac also gives you the benefit of browsing the code from the web, a bug tracker and a Wiki.

      svn allows webdav access through either an apache module or its own daemon. The other features you mentioned seem to be way outside the scope of a source control tool (IMHO but YMMV).

      • The OP said they think svn is overkill for what they want. Personally I think of svn as CVS II, and expect many people to migrate eventually (probably about the same speed as migration from Apache 1 to Apache 2).

        The CVSTrac features are really nice, especially if you want to show a PHB what is going on, ro have them actually participate. For example, see the timeline [cvstrac.org] feature. Having all your CVS checkins, wiki and bug tracker items combined is really nice.

  • CVSNT + WinCVS or Perforce (Score:3, Informative)

    by DamienMcKenna ( 181101 ) <{moc.annek-cm} {ta} {neimad}> on Monday April 19, 2004 @08:39PM (#8911547)
    Due to the fact that SVN isn't available for Windows (a native port, no cygwyn stuff), I recommend either Perforce [perforce.com] or CVSNT [cvsnt.org] + WinCVS [wincvs.org]. I've used CVSNT at work and home for some time and it works great.

    • Re:CVSNT + WinCVS or Perforce (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Due to the fact that SVN isn't available for Windows...
      Huh? I may be missing something here, but I personally used Subversion for windows and it does work. What do you care what it's linked against?
      • The point of having a native port is so that you don''t have to download a vast quantity of extras just to run one daemon. Not everyone has broadband...

        Damien
        • The point of having a native port is so that you don''t have to download a vast quantity of extras just to run one daemon. Not everyone has broadband...

          But the original post is to Ask Slashdot. If he can read /. he is probably not afraid of a few extra Mb bandwidth for extras.
        • You don't need the daemon if you're working with a local repository (at least on Windows), which is I suspect something that would work for the guy asking the question.

          SVN used that way is more like VSS than CVS. CVS AFAIK can't work without a daemon (or service in Win32).

          However, if you work with a local repository, dropping VSS for SVN is a bit dumb because you lose the GUI (TortoiseSVN is nice but the VSS explorer is better, IMO) and the integration with MS tools (the one SVN SCC I've tried with VS.N

    • Perforce (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Bronster ( 13157 ) <slashdot@brong.net> on Monday April 19, 2004 @08:54PM (#8911685) Homepage
      I'd definitely recommend Perforce as well, but it's not free. Of course, as a single user you can use the 2 users/2 workspaces design supported without a licence.

      Believe me, you'll be happier than with the current crop of free stuff (though I'd be tempted by Subversion if it didn't depend on so many things just because they're the latest cool thing).

      Perforce is nice on Linux too in that it's just a couple of statically compiled binaries that work everywhere. Pleasant change to dependency hell (like getting any recent piece of software onto Debian stable)
      • Not necessarily. There is a 2 user evaluation license, but the EULA forbids production use. There is another F/OSS license. Check their pricing FAQ.

        http://www.perforce.com/perforce/price.html

        • Re:Perforce (Score:5, Informative)

          by markhb ( 11721 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @09:42AM (#8915844) Journal
          I believe you're confusing two separate issues. The agreement relating to "no production use" is the evaluation, where you can have them give you a limited-time license key for n users to evaluate the software. The 2-user, 2-workspace configuration is gratis:
          You can download and use any Perforce software product free. All Perforce software you download is fully functional, with the exception of the Perforce Server, which allows only two users and two client workspaces when used without a license.
          That is from the page you referenced. Also, from http://www.perforce.com/perforce/loadprog.html [perforce.com],
          You may use software downloaded from Perforce for any purpose you want and for as long as you like. The Perforce Server supports only two users and two client workspaces unless used with a Perforce License.
          As far as I have been able to tell, there is no restriction against using the 2-user version in production. If you have an example of such a restiction, please post it.
    • Due to the fact that SVN isn't available for Windows (a native port, no cygwyn stuff)

      a.) Who cares? If it workrs it works.

      b.) I think you're wrong here. I just did a dependency analysis on svn.exe, and I see no dependencies on cygwin1.dll.
    • Unfortunately this poster is wrong. As well as native port of SVN... There is TortoiseSVN which is a Window Explorer plugin that make SVN completely easy to use. --Give a man a beer and he'll waste a day. Teach a man to brew beer and he'll waste a lifetime
    • We use subversion at work all the time, both for the client and the server.

      For the server, it is best to setup Apache, and perhaps PHP to run websvn if you want a nice web interface. Also, install mod_auth_sspi so that you can use native NT authentication.

      For the client, TortoiseSVN and AnkhSVN work great for Explorer and Visual Studio.NET integration.

      All of this is native Win32. Subversion itself uses the Apache Portable runtime to work cross-platform, not Cygwin.

  • QVCS (Score:3, Informative)

    by prostoalex ( 308614 ) * on Monday April 19, 2004 @08:42PM (#8911567) Homepage Journal

    The place where I work (embedded software development as well) uses QVCS [qumasoft.com]. It was there before I arrived, so I am not sure about the setup, but overall works great, and the license cost maxes out at $100 for 4 users. You install it on a Windows box, and then launch the client copies by providing a shortcut to the server install, so cannot run more than 4 simultaneous copies, but that works for us.

  • I've used Component Software RCS http://www.componentsoftware.com/ several times on small project with good (not perfect) results. There is a no cost option that you might be able to use.
    • I'll second the vote for CS-RCS [componentsoftware.com]

      Several years ago I was in a similar situation to the original poster - lone developer, several smallish projects, manually managing files. I'm fairly certain it was an Ask Slashdot that led me to CS-RCS. As a lone developer, I didn't see much need for a complex CVS system. RCS does a great job for my needs, and was free to boot. They do offer a paid "Pro" version, which offers more features. They have a decent chart that compares the free to the pro version.

      CS-RCS int

  • Tortoise CVS (Score:2, Informative)

    by grent246 ( 600606 )
    I have had great success using Tortoise CVS. It allows you to use a local directory as your repository rather than having to set up a CVS Server.

    It integrates into the Windows shell so you can very easily see what files have changes visually from the icon, and all normal CVS operations can be done from the context menu in Windows Explorer.

  • or cvs (Score:3, Informative)

    by akookieone ( 530708 ) <andrew@NospaM.beginsinwonder.com> on Monday April 19, 2004 @08:50PM (#8911638) Homepage
    I like subversion as well, and its a good time to jump on that band-wagon as the product is mature enough now you shouldn't have to work very hard to defend its use over other older/established tech.(If it were up to me entirely, this is what I would use.)

    On the other hand, cvs isn't terrible - and you don't need to be doing OSS or huge # of devs to warrant its use. Cygwin [cygwin.com] allows you you run in windows, and there is also a windows version of the cvs server [cvsnt.org].

    But look, if you are developing something windows based, and using MS products or IDE's, VSS is not out of the question...it plays well with other MS tools, so it might make the most sense.

  • The obvious recommendation is CVS (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ObviousGuy ( 578567 ) <ObviousGuy@hotmail.com> on Monday April 19, 2004 @08:52PM (#8911658) Homepage Journal
    As everyone else around here attests to, CVS is the obvious choice.

    But my question is what kind of company is it that can't afford to pay for business software? As this kind of thing can be deducted from taxes, it makes a lot of sense to let the company pay for the software and enjoy the tax relief.

    Even if the company is just you, it would be better to let the corporation pay for it and not pay full price on the software out of your salary.

    Charge your next customer a little more and use the difference to pay for some software. Of course it makes sense to use free software whenever possible, but I can't imagine agreeing to being taken advantage of by a company like you are describing.

  • Source Safe (Score:2, Insightful)

    by omibus ( 116064 )
    Comes with Visual Studio, and will do just about anything a group of 1-5 developers could want.

    I know people trash Source Safe, but for small groups of developers, it isn't that bad.

    Otherwise, you could try The Valt (http://www.sourcegear.com/vault/index.asp), but you need SQL Server to run it.

    • Re:Source Safe (Score:5, Informative)

      by rrsipov ( 648218 ) on Monday April 19, 2004 @10:43PM (#8912689)
      My team used to use Source Safe (6.0), and with just a few people it ended up being really horrible. The files are stored in a big binary (I think) mess which caused problems at least twice when SourceSafe decided it was corrup. Tool support (at the time) was pretty awful (outside of Visual Studio, and a few other programs). We moved to CVS. While CVS has some issues (handeling of binary files, etc) it works. I have had problems with Windows GUI tools though. The best we've found seems (ironically) to be LinCVS (lincvs.org). Also, subversion in local mode might work for you. Finally, I seem to recall that several major commercial tools have a free 1 or 2 user limited version.
    • Comes with Visual Studio, and will do just about anything a group of 1-5 developers could want.

      While VSS basically works if you don't have any special needs, simple things such as branching and merging becoma a nightmare - let alone the lock philosophy preventing parallel work on the same file.

      • Did you now you can turn the exclusive locks off? You can set it as a default somewhere, otherwise look at the checkout options when you're checking out files in the sourcesafe client. It's been awhile since I had merge conflicts but I recall there being a nice colorful interface if you need to resolve any conflicts.
    • Just to add my $0.02, I have heard of bad things happening with VSS, but if it's just you then you probably won't have those problems.

      The Vault is a decent product, and it can run on SQL Server OR MSDE which is a free download. If you're only using it for yourself the Vault is free as well.

      Free is much better than the arm + leg charged for VSS.
      • And to add my $0.02, I switched our team to CVS after our VSS database ended up getting corrupted, losing all of our data in the process.

        Sure, you always have backups, but it turned out that we lost a week's worth of work anyway.

        We haven't lost anything with CVS (yet - knock on wood). Our codebase is now somewhere around 350k lines and there's been no problems.

  • subversion is easy to use (Score:5, Informative)

    by Adhoc ( 132137 ) on Monday April 19, 2004 @08:59PM (#8911726)
    As long as you stay on a single box, subversion is very easy to use.
    svnadmin create C:\repo
    cd <workdir>

    svn co file:///repo #(might want to check the syntax on that, not sure if it's different on windows)
    svn add foo.c
    svn commit

    etc, etc
    While the details might be off a bit, it will be something like that easy. there is excellent documentation for subversion at http://svnbook.red-bean.com/ which covers all the bases really. Where subversion gets complicated is setting up network access, but even that isn't that hard. A couple of hours of reading the red-bean book and you'll be all set. In any case it isn't really any harder than CVS to setup and is more refined. RCS is probably too weak. No support for directories structures. good luck. Adhoc

  • Tortoise SVN (Score:5, Informative)

    by manonthespoon ( 607414 ) on Monday April 19, 2004 @09:10PM (#8911850) Homepage
    Tortoise SVN is a version of the subversion client server that integrates with windows 2000, XP.

    Right click on a file or folder to check it in, create a repository and just about everything else. It's actually very simple to use and you get all the power of a Subversion.
    • Definitely, Tortise SVN makes version control easy.

    • Re:Tortoise SVN (Score:3, Informative)

      by nick_danger ( 150058 )
      Definitely Tortoise w/subversion.

      I'm using it in a very similar situation: I'm the sole developer for a Windows based Delphi application. I've found it to be VERY easy to use; it supports branches/version snapshots/etc, it's fast, and it easily supports binaries as well as text. Tortoise integrates into the Windows explorer, providing icon overlays in the tree view and the file view indicating the status of tracked files and a bunch of other things. No need to pull up the DOS penalty box to issue comm

  • definitely go for subversion. If you look for a guide on how to set up svnserve+ssh on win xp do a google search of svnserve ssh on xp
  • Intuitive and works like a charm.

  • What a coincidence.... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Danse ( 1026 ) on Monday April 19, 2004 @10:15PM (#8912436)

    I was just researching this very question for myself today. Found a nifty comparison [berlios.de] between several source control systems. Perforce and BitKeeper seem like the most complete systems, with Monotone and Subversion close on their heels. The trial version of Perforce works for up to 2 people with all features enabled. It gets kind of expensive if you need more than that ($750/seat). Couldn't find actual pricing for BitKeeper, although they were prompt in replying to an email to their sales address and I'm discussing it with them.

  • How about Darcs? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Wonko ( 15033 ) <thehead@patshead.com> on Monday April 19, 2004 @10:22PM (#8912519) Homepage Journal

    How about Darcs [abridgegame.org]?

    I was just recently looking to move away from CVS for my personal projects. I'm not always home, and I wanted to have copies of my repositories on at least my laptop and desktop.

    At first, I was leaning towards trying out GNU Arch. But I really wanted something that had a working win32 client. So I took a look at Darcs.

    I'm very happy with it so far. It is extremely easy to set up and use (but I haven't seen any gui frontends if that's the kind of thing you want). It is also very easy to keep multiple repositries in sync.

    I've read that it can be slow for large projects. I don't remember reading the definition of large, but none of my repositories qualify :).

    You might also want to check out this comparison [zooko.com] or this comparison [berlios.de] of revision control systems.

  • Well, not really Winzip. Use the Win32 port of infozip. Put it in your build script, have it name the zip of your build directory with a datestamp in the filename. Have it build a zip each time you run make, or whatever your build script is.

    Remember, folks, this is a solitary programmer question.

    • Re:Winzip (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PylonHead ( 61401 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @12:30AM (#8913407) Homepage Journal
      Spoken like someone who has never used version control. Just because he's all on his lonesome isn't a good reason to miss out on all the fun:

      With version control I can see the last three times I changed a specific file. I can show the diffs for my latest change at the touch of a button. I can keep seperate branches for release 1.2 and release 2.0. I can merge the bug fixes I apply to version 1.2 into 2.0.

      It takes a while to understand the benefits of version control, but once you do, you'll use it for all your development, solo or otherwise.

  • TortoiseSVN in local repository mode... (Score:5, Informative)

    by zhiwenchong ( 155773 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @12:39AM (#8913454)
    ... is probably what you want. A single GUI app, no Subversion server necessary. It uses a folder on your hard drive as the repository instead of a WebDAV server etc. It seems to implement Subversion internally or something...

    TortoiseSVN is here [tigris.org]

    I use version control on my local Win32 machine to manage different versions of files. I've used both TortoiseCVS and TortoiseSVN in local repository mode, and I highly recommend TortoiseSVN over TortoiseCVS. Forget CVS, really! SVN is much better, even for personal use. It is lightweight, and you don't have to run any server -- the client manages everything for you. Here's information [tigris.org] on running TortoiseSVN in local repository mode (with screenshots and all)

    Quote:
    "If you're not working in a team but working alone on a project and still want your work under version control you can also access a repository locally. This kind of repository access is also very handy if you just want to try out some Subversion commands and you don't want to risk screwing your "official" repository."
  • According to this page [cvshome.org], it should be possible to use CVS on Win32 platforms. As long as you're maintaining your code on one machine, this might be good enough. They suggest using Win32 CVS against a *nix CVS server, but have this to say about single-machine CVS:

    The second way is known as "local" or "non-client/server" CVS. This lets you run CVS if you have only Windows machines. However, due to issues (a) with local CVS on Windows, and (b) with the suitability of Windows as a server operating system in g

  • Serious questions (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bmac ( 51623 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @01:06AM (#8913580) Journal
    I'm in the same boat as the question poser, and I've got some questions to ask:

    Does CVS/Subversion automatically track changes to directory trees of code over time, or do you have to somehow "stamp" a save point or snapshot or somesuch?

    I do a fair bit of code generation (due to C# and C having no generics), so will a version control system be able to track changes to data that is relevant to my code. As well, I use text and Excel files as design docs, so can they be included in the "files that matter" set?

    Sorry to sound like such a n00b, but I've always been the lone programmer, even on large projects. It seems very hard for me to believe that I will gain a cost benefit (as per time invested) from a version control system. Sure, I've not read up on the different packages, but what I'm asking here is for the expert synopsis, if someone would break down the flow for me, please.

    Thanks in advance.

    Peace & Blessings,
    bmac

    • Re:Serious questions (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      One of the real benefits is being able to make changes, test them, and then revert all or some of the changes easily when needed, i.e. a safety-blanket.

      Another is being able to track the history of your work in a blow-by-blow fashion: knowing why changes were made is important.

      The ease of use is the key factor: you want to be easily able to add files to the version control repository, determine which files have changed and how they have changed vis-à-vis the repository copy, and rapidly add new ver

    • Re:Serious questions (Score:2, Informative)

      by stevey ( 64018 )

      (Disclaimer I once wrote an emacs mode for subversion, but have never used it in anger).

      CVS works more in the "stamping" way you suggest.

      When you create a project you import all the files that you care about, the sources the test scripts, and any documentation that you care about.

      After that you checkout a clean copy from your new repository and have a blast working on it.

      When you have implemented a new feature, or made a new change you then run 'cvs commit'.

      The commit process examines the local files f

    • Just a note to the other comment. If you use binary files you can include them but they won't be properly managed. So you can't do diffs and such on them. Binary files includes Excel and Word files. I'd recommend that you keep you documentation in pure text files (or Latex/HTML if you want to have markups).

    • Re:Serious questions (Score:2, Informative)

      by rrsipov ( 648218 )
      I don't have any experice w/ subversion. With CVS the changes are tracked per-file. You can "tag" a directory structure to create a named point that you can later use. For binary files CVS just keeps a copy of each different version. As I understand it subverion is a good bit better than CVS on a number of things including: commands to rename or move files/directories which preserve the information about the change (there is no good way to rename or move anything in CVS, although some if you have a smal
    • I haven't worked with Subversion too extensively yet, but it does track changes to directories as well as files. Even tracking whether you've deleted, moved, or renamed directories. You can checkout the commit number for whenever those directories were removed, or even checkout the state of that directory at a certain point in time and pull it into your current working environment. The Subversion book covers this in more detail. It also tracks all kinds of files... source code, documents, even binary files
    • You should read the CVS book: http://cvsbook.red-bean.com/cvsbook.html [red-bean.com]

      In short, with CVS you check out files from the repository, work on them (edit, compile, test, whatever) and when they are in a suitable state you check them back in (commit) which causes the version number associated with each file to automatically increase. If your working dir is in a particularly interesting state, for example a release version, then you create a "tag" which saves that state, essentially remembering the version numb
  • Do yourself a favour -- don't try running the server on a Windows machine, it'll be a world of pain.

    Just get hold of a clunky old PC, install linux, and use that as a dedicated source code control server with whatever system you want to use. You'll save yourself a lot of bother (and a bit more immunity to disk crashes, too).
  • install these 2, setup subversion and you're done. I use it for all of our .NET code and it works very very very good.
  • What revision control system does MS use?

  • Source Safe (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dnnrly ( 120163 ) on Tuesday April 20, 2004 @04:43AM (#8914359)
    I hate to admit it, but for single developer projects Source Safe is actually really handy! It's absolutely pants at handling merging but this shouldn't be much of a problem if there's just one of you or even in a small team of 3 or 4 should you choose to expand the operation.
    It keeps track of eveything and allows for easy versioning and comparison between versions. I found it's great if you find new problems cropping up after a certain date and you want to compare what changes you made.

    Beware though, it's not much good at anything else so if you want to use multiple branches or get frequent source updates from the client or anywhere else I'd consider something else.

    • No, I'm not just dinging it because it's an MS product. I've used VSS extensively, and my conclusion is that you should not put anything valuable into VSS unless you have backup copies elsewhere, which sort of defeats the purpose. It's a fragile POS, breaks at glance, and provides no functionatility that is not better implemented elsewhere and more cheaply. If you're willing to pay for a product, then both Perforce and Bitkeeper are lightyears beyond VSS. If you want free, then there are a variety of choice

      • Bullshit. What about "copies of everything somewhere else" is different from making backups of the repository every day? Regardless of whether you use VSS or CVS or anything else. Perhaps you're confusing "source control" with "backup".

        VSS is hardly the cream of the crop, but what it does do it does well. It is not an industrial strength SCC, and Microsoft has never sold it as such. So yes, branching and merging are not that hot, and it's not a client/server system and etc., but if you need that then get

        • Bullshit. What about "copies of everything somewhere else" is different from making backups of the repository every day?

          There's a big difference! As long as you have a backup of the most recent version of a CVS repository, you're fine.

          The allegation against VSS is that it frequently corrupts its own database. A backup copy of the corrupted data is no good. Even if you keep multiple historical backups, its still no fun to restore each of those from tape to search for the last non-corrupted copy.

          Some

        • Bullshit yourself. Of course you back up the SCC repository. The problem is that VSS repositories go bad without showing the signs until later. So you have nice backups of corrupt data. Woohoo! And yes, one can sometimes pick through and fix the problem. It's a lovely way to spend the day or weekend.

          If you know what you're doing you should never get corrupted files or lose history or anything like that.

          Absolutely correct. That should never happen. But we did know what we were doing, and it happened non

    • Microsoft does not use it, at least not for most of their development. It is just too unstable and does not scale up well. If Microsoft refuses to eat their own dogfood, why the heck should we?

      Visual Source Safe is probably better than using nothing at all. It is probably worse than any other alternative, however.
  • Why is subversion overkill? It's easy to install and run. Use it!

  • FreeVCS (Score:2, Informative)

    by jwbozzy ( 519130 )
    I'm currently using FreeVCS [freevcs.org] to maintain a source tree with 965 files, about 30k each. It's an interesting approach in that it stores all the code in a database (DBISAM by default). It's designed for Delphi developers, but I am using to store a game engine (C++) and the associated scripts (TorqueScript), and I haven't had a problem with it yet. It also implements check out messages (why did you check this file out? "To fix the wankiness in doSomething()"), which can be quite useful once you get into multi-de
  • Not used it, but it looks pretty good if you're in the Windows world - like a better version of VSS. And it's free for a single user here [sourcegear.com]. Also, the guy that runs the company - Eric Sink - is quite well know in blogging circles. Some of his columns about starting a company are linked to from /.
  • Soucegear vault. (http://www.sourcegear.com/)

    Similar feature set as VSS, runs on MSDE (which is free) or SQL Serer 2K so it's a heck of a lot more robust, supposed to intergrate into VS.Net as well as VSS.

    Single user edition is free ( http://software.ericsink.com/20040213.html#10151 )

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