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1. 4NT - I am old enough to use the command line.
2. Visual Slickedit - my editor of choice. I started out with version 4 and I just sent off the money for the upgrade to version 9 yesterday.
3. Subversion - 'cause VCS is a must. The place where I work may not use it but I will.
4. Tortoise SVN - to make my life with a VCS even more easy.
5. Cygwin - mostly for GCC.
6. Linkstash - I think this is a much better way to manage bookmarks
7. Winzip - the latest version. And yes, I've paid for it.
8. Object Desktop - I've gotten addicted to Object Bar and Object Edit. No, I'm not into skinning...
9. OE-QuoteFix - makes Outlook Express a bearable newsreader.
10. ev41 - a free HP-41 emulation for when I need a real calculator. There is a Pocket PC version too.

1. 4NT - I am old enough to use the command line.
2. Visual Slickedit - my editor of choice. I started out with version 4 and I just sent off the money for the upgrade to version 9 yesterday.
3. Subversion - 'cause VCS is a must. The place where I work may not use it but I will.
4. Tortoise SVN - to make my life with a VCS even more easy.
5. Cygwin - mostly for GCC.
6. Linkstash - I think this is a much better way to manage bookmarks
7. Winzip - the latest version. And yes, I've paid for it.
8. Object Desktop - I've gotten addicted to Object Bar and Object Edit. No, I'm not into skinning...
9. OE-QuoteFix - makes Outlook Express a bearable newsreader.
10. ev41 - a free HP-41 emulation for when I need a real calculator. There is a Pocket PC version too.

Check out this for info on nptl and subversion. Re-compiling Berkeley DB without nptl support worked for me.

... 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

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 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."

... 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

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 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."

here.

Also, what am I missing that makes it significantly better than a triggered rsync session, i.e. one that runs either periodically or whenever a threshold of changes is exceeded?

ArgoUML written in Java. Posidon is a nice add-on. Umbrello is a part of KDE.

maybe my research is crap - but these look like the funders of Subversion...

thought that name rang a bell.

ArgoUML is the tool you want. BSD License.

As another user pointed out, you don't need to have Apache 2 running as your webserver if you want to access Subversion. You can do one of the following:

• Run Apache 1.x as your webserver on port 80, and then have Apache 2.x running side-by-side as a separate server and have it listen on port 3690, the port that IANA has reserved for the Subversion protocol.
• Instead of Apache, run the lightweight Subversion server svnserve. It's quite simple to set up compared to Apache, but can only grant blanket read/write permissions. Also, you can't fine-tune permissions on a per-directory basis like you can with Apache.
• If you have pre-existing accounts on your system, you can tunnel through ssh via the svn+ssh://host/path/to/repo pragma which will authenticate itself via ssh and use the Unix file permissions on the repository.
• If you are the only one accessing your repository, you can even use the file:///path/to/repo pragma and forego a server altogether.

Thomas

I hope that instead of a save button, some programs will constantly save work and provide a timeline-like feature to go through all changes in the document if neccessary.

I use vim and RCS for this purpose.

RCS allows me to check in and out revisions, and each revision has a change log. I can roll back changes, check differences, and even make my own branch of a file.

Subversion, CVS, Arch and many others also can fill the same role. Heck, you can even make a directory named backup and rename a copy of the file to 'myfile_date'. The reason why I settled on RCS is that its relatively simple to use and its cross platform (Linux, BSD, Windows-via-Cygwin, etc). I've been tempted to adopt one of the larger revision control systems for additional features, but haven't gotten around to it.

As for Vim, its cross platform, rather full featured, and if the power goes out, I still can recover the file. Plus its easy to use with RCS through a few simple aliases and/or keymaps. There is also Gnu Emacs or XEmacs and a host of other good text editors.

Sure, there could be one program that would do both, but that wouldn't be as useful. The unix philosophy of "do one thing, and do it well" is less of a pain in the long run. This way, I can reuse my $editor_of_choice in many other unix applications - slrn, mutt, etc. If I had one integrated program, sooner or later I'd become fed up with one part of it or another, and I would be forced to continue using it.

Just my $.02.

YMMV.

Yes, if you've used TortoiseCVS before, you might want to check out TortoiseSVN...

It integrates into Windows Explorer and allows you to do all the updates, commits, etc with right mouse clicks.

That's a pretty good question in my opinion, and TortoiseSVN's Windows shell-extension doesn't cut it. ("-1, Redundant" my ass.) If you're looking for something more like WinCVS, check out RapidSVN.

... and if you want to use it with ssh on top of svnserve you can read this step by step guide

Problem is, everyone using ssh must log in to the same user account or the permissions get screwed up. So, yes, it's quite hard to share repositories in Subversion.

See the project front page
Subversion

What are they doing teaching people how to use CVS? Don't they know that Subversion 1.0 finally came out today?

TortoiseCVS, now that is nice integration. Isn't there a subversion version of it somewhere?

Yes, it's TortoiseSVN. I've used it on some small projects and it works well. It's basically the same as TortoiseCVS.

Subversion itself has been self-hosting with Subversion since 2001. Subversion 1.0 source is currently hosted on Subversion 0.37.

Try out TortoiseSVN as well. I us VS.NET, and have come to prefer doing version control through Windows Explorer.

Subversion 0.8 (14 January 2002): Commit system rewrite (issue #463); diffs over the network in both directions (issue #518); newline conversion and keyword substitution (issue #524); and code migration from libsvn_fs to libsvn_repos (issue #428).

It's called AnkhSVN.

Enjoy!

Yes and then again no...

The tools exist as part of the project but they do not claim they are perfect, see here

Although 50mb is hardly anything really, we are looking at transferring ~5GB of data out of CVS and into subversion at the moment, testing for stability and conversion ability should begin now that they have got to 1.0.

Not sure why the original poster said Subversion came from "the people who maintain CVS". They are two separate developer groups -- as far as I know there is no overlap between the currently active developers of CVS and Subversion.

Also, he was early :-). Subversion 1.0 wasn't actually out yet when he posted. We had released a beta prerelease, and were careful to say that 1.0 itself wouldn't be out till Monday. Oh well, win some, lose some.

Anyway, it's almost Monday now, so check back soon at http://subversion.tigris.org/.

There is: AnkhSVN.

VS.NET plugin. (project page, with downloads, normally here but currently blown away by the load. Maybe grab it from the Google cache of the page but that too seems to be overloaded. Oh well. You could always use TortoiseSVN instead.)

There was an old VC++ plugin "Subway" but it sucks.

It's not released under the Apache/BSD License . . .

It's released under an Apache Style license.

Google Cache since the site seems to be dying as we speak.

Just a nit on Subversion's status: it's in beta now, with a release candidate scheduled for tomorrow and the official 1.0 release set for Monday.

OK, that's actually 2 words. But they're important words describing a feature CVS lacks. Basically it means that when I commit a bunch of files, they either all are committed or none of them are. No partial commits that break the build. No chance of getting latest during what happens to be the midst of someone else's multi-file commit.

See the Subversion site to try it out.

In the last 10 years, I've worked on projects with RCS, CVS, Sourcesafe, Perforce, and Subversion. Once you get used to atomic commits in Perforce and Subversion, you'll wonder why any source control software is still used that doesn't do it this way.

-_-_-

see also phing

A number of posters ask why would one even want to use CVS considering its known faults? Although I'm personally partial to Subversion, choosing CVS doesn't seem unreasonable. CVS is no less useful today than it was (say) two years ago, before Arch or Subversion or any of the other new kids on the block were ready. If you want something that does the job and whose problems are known, CVS is not a bad choice.

But on to the real reason for my post:

Some of the posts here make simply wrong statements about Subversion. Below are corrections.

1. Subversion does not require a Unix user account per vc user. Furthermore, this is true not just with the WebDAV (http://) access method, but also with the svnserve (svn://) method. Some posts said otherwise; not sure why.

2. Subversion does *not* require Apache, nor does it require you to use the WebDAV protocol for repository access. Apache/WebDAV is one of two entirely independent network access methods. The other is a custom protocol (think of it like CVS pserver) using a custom server (svnserve) and its own URL space, "svn://".

3. Subversion is not in Alpha anymore, it is in Beta. This was a recent transition, so it's understandable that people wouldn't have known about it.

4. Someone said you can't make client-side graphical reports about revisions and differences, because the client doesn't have access to the right information. I think this person must have read and misunderstood a highly technical mailing list thread. The client does have access to the necessary information already (see 'svn log -v' for starters).

People with further questions about Subversion should please come to users@subversion.tigris.org, or irc.freenode.net, channel #svn. Hope to see you there!

By the way, I have not used Arch in a long time, so can't comment on the differences between it and Subversion.

this

Actually, subversion went beta before Christmas.

Subversion looks a lot nicer than Arch. svn just tries to be a "better cvs" and fixes a load of the nasty things about CVS. Its a lot faster too, and theres a plugin which lets you use it in Eclipse. Plus it has some pretty cool features like the apache plugin which lets you check out over http.

Unfortunately, subversion seems to be always _almost_ stable enough for real use. Maybe this has changed recently (I've just played with it, I still use CVS for real work). I haven't really checked out GNU Arch - it seems to claim to support changesets (groups of changes), and thus I presume atomic commits, better/faster branching and merging and so on - the other good stuff that CVS is lacking. My guess is that Arch is even less mature than Subversion though, since it appears to have not been around as long.

Anyone else know of any other good alternatives that are more mature?

who uses cvs anymore? *giggle*

By the way, backports.org has a wonderful woody backport of subversion.

How it's done is, roughly, for a few related tables:

1. Create tables using dia's UML's classes.
2. Join the tables using UML Association to establish foreign keys.
3. Set dia to autofit diagram into a number of pages.
4. Add comments, draw pictures, whatever dia can draw.
5. Save as an uncompressed XML file, chuck it into CVS. CVS likes text, so don't compress it.
6. Optional: Print out pretty diagrams to printer. Dia's autofit is nice.

1. Create a Makefile to convert .dia to .sql using tedia2sql, and .dia to .eps using dia. (Left as an excerise to the reader). Bonus: autogen .eps to .pdf.
2. Set up tedia2sql config to generate to your favourite rdbms. Or change Makefile to generate SQLs for each of Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL.
3. Type 'make'.

1. 5. Profit!

Congrats! You have have fully printable, documentated, usable SQLs, and have version control on the schemas too. (Missing step is "4. Debug")

P.S. tedia2sql is written in easily hackable perl.

Check out Subclipse. I haven't tried it myself (since I don't use subversion yet). It looks fairly feature complete though.

Not everyone thinks CVS is the best though... Personally I can't wait to have Subversion integration available in Eclipse.

I used to think that too. I've had a rude awakening over the past couple years. The issue that defines the difference between excitement and apathy for mid-to-upper management? It's the same one that your mother used when picking out drapes or a new dress;

It's all about "pretty".

Well, pretty vs. the unspoken alternative "ugly". A close second is 'can this give me bragging rights about using "the best" most professionally accepted choice?'. Think binary; it's either yes or no, with no middle ground. Managers make decisions or they are ineffective.

It's not what we want or even see is necessary...it's what management (in a 15 minute or shorter meeting) can be convinced of. In that time, they can spot UGLY a mile away, though ugly is often confused with "unfamiliar". Keep in mind that they see "pretty" as "polished and complete" so anything that isn't pretty is not ready...and bosses don't want to mess with something that isn't ready to go. Case in point, Gnome gets quite a bit of corporate backing...because it is pretty (polished consistant from desktop to desktop and app to app) while KDE looks like an errector set. This isn't a flame, the truth is much more complex, though if you have 30 seconds to show someone both...Gnome looks more pretty.

15 - or 5 - minutes of rational talk about pros and cons will not change *anyone's mind*. Habbits and superficial issues will swamp all concerns. Even what is pretty or ugly will change from person to person, but typically not by much.

If you want people to start using OSS, use it yourself and deploy it everywhere. Are you using it for your desktop? I am. Are you using it for corporate servers? I am; ugly Bugzilla, and pretty DCL. Bugzilla serves a necessary function of a project, so it actually gets used more. I've also made a point that there is a migration path to pretty in the form of Scarab. In the meantime, I've modified Bugzilla to make it a little more pretty.

Make sure it looks normal and nice; that it looks pretty and isn't awkward. Costs less is a motivator, though pretty really does matter most. The cost and savings -- both up front savings and in the lower costs for maintenance and lost data -- are the mass of the avalanche, not the pebbles that get it moving.

For instance, we are pretty sure that N Korea is ruled by as much of a maniac as Iraq

(In other news, karl and the gang are approaching the borders of a hard freeze, will soon start beta testing their provisional replacement, and hopefully release a new form of collaborative democracy on the world before too long!)

Obligatory link to Subversion, since this new-fangled hypertext media allows it.

(With a hint of sarcasm for you mentioning it but not linking!)

From personal experience it seems to be quite usable already. Although I did find it hard to install and get everything set up properly (path problems, etc) partly because I'm a Visual SourceSafe refugee. I'm still not quite used to the pathing schemes and checkin model and am still confused by wanting to assign a VSS-style 'working directory' to a Subversion folder and not knowing what to do about that.

I wonder why CVS, and not something more advanced, like Arch or Subversion? Especially since he outright complains about common limitations in CVS, like moving files and dealing with directories at all. If he's hoping, as he says, "for a better replacement some day", why not see what the present has to offer?

I mean, that's not to say that alternative systems are perfect, either. I'm going through the process of learning arch now. There's a learning curve, but not nearly as big as it's made out to be. Still, using something else (almost anything else) would probably help on things like the merging issues, especially since he mentions that sometimes it's a pain keeping things in sync between three of his machines.

If they can't use the up2date servers then maybe current an open source clone.

At least that way the standard RHN clients would continue to work.

...that China would get that bent out of shape about version control.... Go figure.

Here it is:
http://current.tigris.org/

What is a subversion repository?

Subversion is a CVS replacement that tries to fix some of the weirdness that is CVS. I've been using it for about a year, and have found it to be very nice -- not much new to learn, and acts in a much more sane manner than CVS. It's still alpha for now (and using it ATM requires that you update fairly regularly), but it seems to be rapidly approaching the beta milestone.

Not true. There are many open-source projects funded by companies with full-time employees. IBM has contributed quite a bit to Linux. Does IBM not pay their employees during their Linux development time?

Get real.

Open Source is not at all merely about spare-time hobbyists but rather people and companies contributing software engineering and development effort in a non-proprietary way.

I agree with the rest of your post that its existence is important as an alternative to the monoculture of Microsoft's monopoly. But, do not minimize the amount of energy devoted to OSS development as "hobbyists in their spare time."

Microsoft is a huge company, lots of employees don't share the intent to harm the competitor. They often do things that are cool or seem like good ideas technically. Some get squashed by manglement and others eventually make it out.

Disclaimer: I don't work for Microsoft nor do I even like them all that much. The only reason they earn any of my respect is because of Cutler.