Want to be sold on using SVN or something like it

Links to shit describing it welcome.

I've started helping a friend with creating a custom gametype for a game. (really just editing/tweaking existing scripts, to match what he thinks it should do).

However i can see big problems coming along, becuase he is editing the main scripts at the moment, while i'm mainly inserting new content/classes etc. That would be fine, but everynow and then i need to edit the main one, to add in the content i've added.

To simplify it, we might be manipulating the same file.

I think this is what SVN is good for?, i've never really programmed in a group (not for non-uni projects anyway).

Just really wondering if this is what i'm looking for, or if i should still be just emailing him and getting him to cut in my changes.

Cheers guys

 

http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/

Read.

 

Defiintely SVN. Piss easy to setup, and you'll never lose anything (and I mean anything) again.

 

I recently asked a question about version control here:
http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=712222

and now I'm sold on SVN, I've set it up on an apache web server, and have made a script that runs when someone commits changes to copy the changes to my IIS directory.

It's great, was easy to setup and works well. You can do heaps of cool stuff with the commit scripts, like email the changes in files to members of the group etc

Definately have a play with TortoiseSVN

 

as I said in the other thread, and I will say it again.

http://www.visualsvn.com if you are on a windows platform

 

Source control's definitely the way to go for your situation. TortoiseSVN is definitely the ideal tool to be using on Windows; it's a clean, simple implementation that exposes its functionality through an Explorer extension. If you're working in Visual Studio, VisualSVN might be worth shelling out for (it's an extension that lets Tortoise be used through VS), but to be honest I wouldn't bother on a small project like that; it's not much harder to just use TortoiseSVN through Explorer.

 

Also for more reading:
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/

Quite a few good diagrams to explain the processes involved.

 

I was referring to VisualSVN Server. So much easier to set up and it's free. Then use tortoisesvn and AnkhSvn for VS integration.

Great set of tools and not paying a cent.

 

ahh, didnt realise you were talking about the server in the last thread, just looked at it, thought nup not paying for it, tortoise is good and continued.. now it makes sense. So it replaces the apache version?

 

I don't think it replaces the apache version, as it uses the apache libraries but it just removes the need to install/set up apache and all the fucking around, it's what a package should be.

Just click install and you're away. I don't think it could have been made any simpler. The only downside is that it doesn't work witth the svn: protocol, it only works with http:// (no biggy).

It comes with a UI tool so you can manage users etc.

 

How about this. You are an idiot if you don't use SVN, or something like it!

 

Yeah, svn will help you to merge changes when you're both editing the same file.

There's many other good reasons for using a version control:

- It will maintain a history of every change you make. This can be incredibly useful when you find out that a change you made in the past broke something obscure that wasn't picked up straight away. You can fire up svn and see exactly what was changed, and revert it if necessary.

- You can 'tag' stable releases. Any time you need to give a stable version to someone you can grab it easily, it doesn't matter if you're in the middle of something and the latest version isn't usable.

There's heaps of other reasons but those two are probably the most relevant for your situation.

 

If your dev environment is linux based and you do a lot of command line use, you may wish to try git instead, it's substantially faster, branching an merging are ridiculously simple and is distributed by nature.

More detail is available on the git wiki.

 

can't say enough good things about svn. Professional organisations use it so there's plenty of other users to lean on for support. Once setup, there's not that much adminstrative maintenance to do, just remember to back up ur repository every now and then, but since there's only 2 of u using it i can't imagine it being a problem with simultaneous access causing corruption.

 

Thanks for posts guys.

Though i pretty much asked it cause i had no idea what SVN did or how it worked.

I searched through tortoiseSVN's manuals and it explained the ideas behind it. So i'm really pushing to get one up and running now.

 

Keep your eye on Bazaar, http://bazaar-vcs.org/ this new open source revision control system looks to be doing things right and may actually solve the source/revision control problem. (I'm currently using Perforce, have used SVN, SourceSafe and others.)

 

GIT is getting a lot of attention.

 

whats the problem?

 

That's because it's well deserved attention. Git (and it's distributed friends such as Bazzar and Mercurial) encourage a better, and more productive workflow.

 

These might help:

Linus Torvald on GIT
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2199332044603874737
Bryan O'Sullivan on Mercurial Project
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7724296011317502612

If you ever wondered why not everyone in the world uses SVN and thinks is the best thing ever, or have personally pondered the source/revision control problem.