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Windows Source Control for the Lone Developer?
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?"
not the overkill of Subversion, and a bit dated, but it'll do.
You could've hired me.
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.
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.
I have been pwned because my
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)
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
Internally, Microsoft uses Source Depot, which seems to be a source-modified version of Perforce.
It has some additional features that Perforce lacks for doing per-checkin builds and acceptance tests.
RomSteady - I came, I saw, I tested. GamerTag: RomSteady / http://www.romsteady.net
He's using weasel words. The entire product code base is stored in source depot. There's still a few stragglers using a few sourcesafe bits, but if you are in or touch any of the major products you're definitely using Source Depot.
This space for rent.