Filed under: Developer, Windows, Commercial, Freeware, Open Source
Dev Chair : Version control for beginners
by Alex Hung Feb 28th 2007 at 9:00AM
Good, you guys can stop reading now and come back for the next post.
The rest of you may want to stick around and find out why version control software may be something you need but do not know it exists.
Why would you need Version Control?
You may think that version control software is only for 'proper' or hardcore developers. But let's say you host your own blog on a web host. There are many files to maintain for the blog system, let alone the configuration files, the style/template files, the plug-in files, etc. Wouldn't it nice if you can take a snapshot of the whole system every time your blog is in a semi-satisfying state? Or may be you are a Linux user, you probably have a bunch of shell scripts that you use and tinker with everyday. Wouldn't be cool if you can go back to the copy of a script you have last Tuesday at 1:09 AM before you decided (erroneously) that half of the script was junk? How about you are a writer and want to take a snapshot of your novel? Sure you can save multiple copies of your file but if you have spent some time renaming files on your hard disk and append "1", "2", or "old" to the file name, then you are prime candidate for a version control system.
If you're still reading, hopefully I have convinced you the virtue of storing critical and often changed files on a version control system.
What is 'Version Control'?
At the most basic level, version control software maintains a backup copy of files you add to its repository. But it does more than just basic backup. Each time you 'save' a file in the repository, the version control software also marks the new file with a version. So the first time you save a file into the repository, the file will be marked as version 1.0. The next time, it will be marked 2.0 (or 1.1 depending on the naming scheme) and so on. This means that if you need to revert back to a specific version it will be trivial to do so.
Version control software provides many other functions pertinent to software development such as locking, branching, merging, etc. More information can be found on Wikipedia.
Version Control Software
There are great number of version control software out there. The most popular ones such as CVS and Subversion are free, while others more sophisticated are not.
CVS
CVS was originally built on RCS, which is a pretty old system. I used RCS at my first job over 10 years ago, it is that old! CVS includes all of the functionality that most developers would ever need, and is very popular among Open Source projects. There are a few glaring deficiencies though. Namely, renaming files while retaining version history are not part of the system and requires a series of manual steps. Same with moving files. Despite these shortcomings, CVS should serve the need for most people.
Subversion
Subversion is developed as a successor of CVS and contains many fixes for CVS's shortcomings. Renaming and moving files are designed as part of the system from the beginning so it is trivial to do that, and Subversion also provides true atomic operation. This will allow easy rollback of a particular file (or group of files) commit, whereas in CVS it would requires digging through logs to match files and reverts it one by one manually. Subversion is also Open Source and very popular with OSS community.
Client software
Whichever system you choose to use, you will need the corresponding client software on your desktop in order to 'talk' to the repository on the server. The client software also performs some very useful function, the most important of all are file comparison and merging. Again, there are great many choices out there. I would not mention all of them, but here are the ones that I have used and would recommend:
TortoiseCVS and TortoiseSVN - Free, open source clients. Tight integration with Windows Explorer, making them seamless to use.
SmartCVS - Multi-platform Java CVS client. 'Smart' in most places but merging terminology is backward! Free but also has 'Professional' version.
As with all software, try them out before you commit to using one (pun intended!). Version control client is a very personal kind of software. It needs to perform the job quickly and smoothly while not impeding the developer's chain of thoughts and workflow. So try each one out and pick the one that fits your style.
Where to host?
You can host the version control software and repository locally. This will require good knowledge of either *nix or Windows services and database, and is not really the route for non-technical or causal users. Also, self-hosting will not make your content safer if there is not a comprehensive backup strategy for your machine.
The easier route (though may not be free) is to use one of the online version control host. You pay them a nominal periodic fee and they take care of all the nitty-gritty details of maintaining a server for you. The extra benefit of using an online host is that your data is now offsite which provides an extra layer of redundancy in the event of hardware failure, nature disaster, thief, etc.
I use CVSDude which provides both CVS and Subversion hosting, along with Trac, email notification, etc. Why mention CVSDude here? No reason other than it was in the top of the Google search result page! I do not encounter a single issue during the three years of using CVSDude, and their customer service was very responsive.
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Next, we will go over how to best utilise the version control software for your content.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
jon said 11:52AM on 2-28-2007
learn to use a spell checker.
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Neville Franks said 3:31PM on 2-28-2007
"Get up and running with TortoiseSVN and Subversion in 15 minutes" helps anyone who is interested in setting up a version control system using Subversion hit the ground running.
It covers the problem areas I faced when trying to setup subversion and ensures the reader doesn't have to jump over the same hurdles I did.
Lots of people keep putting off establishing a proper version control system, but with free tools like Subversion and TortoiseSVN, along with my article they no longer have an excuse.
See: http://blog.surfulater.com/2007/02/28/get-up-and-running-with-tortoisesvn-and-subversion-in-15-minutes/
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S Jain said 7:17PM on 2-28-2007
Dreamhsot provides you free SVN with every account ... if you use the Krishna coupon code, you can get their L1 Plan for $140 for 2 years with 97 days money back guarantee! That is only $6 bucks a month ... in addition you ofcourse get 172 GB of disk space and 1.72 TB Bandwidth.
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Martin said 6:00AM on 3-01-2007
http://martin-lindhes.blogspot.com/2006/09/how-to-run-subversion-140-in-windows.html
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MegaMix said 2:39PM on 3-01-2007
Use a real tool such as Perforce or Clearcase. These are the most robust and powerful and scaleable tools in the industry with lots of support.
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Web said 11:33AM on 4-16-2007
Interesting article.
Here you can find information how to developt with C++ under Eclipse.
http://weblatam.com/wp/desarrollar-con-cc-en-eclipse/16/
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