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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.
Due to the fact that SVN isn't available for Windows (a native port, no cygwyn stuff), I recommend either Perforce or CVSNT + WinCVS. I've used CVSNT at work and home for some time and it works great.
The place where I work (embedded software development as well) uses QVCS. 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 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.
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 allows you you run in windows, and there is also a windows version of the cvs server.
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.
...begins in wonder
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
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.
Bad User. No biscuit!
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)
CVS (Concurrent Versioning System) is definitely the way to go.
Here are some links to get you started:
CVS On Windows
WinCVS GUI (very nice, uses Python undeneath)
Tortoise CVS
CVS NT Wiki
Component CVS for Windows
All of these are CVS for Windows tools. CVS is a great revision control system.
- Vincit qui patitur.
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.
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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.
I was just researching this very question for myself today. Found a nifty comparison 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.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
How about Darcs?
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 or this comparison of revision control systems.
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.
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 between systems, setting up apache for windows and adding OpenSSL and the Subversion modules are easy (drop me a message and I can point you to some good how-tos, but the Subversion Book (on tigris.org) is pretty much all you need). Once the modules are in place, it's only half a dozen lines in your httpd.conf to open up authenticated https access.
I currently use subversion+tortoise on all my windows machines and the commandline interface on my linux laptop. I run the server from my Win2k workstation with a single port routed through my firewall box.
I use it not just for projects, but also for my thunderbird and firefox profiles (except for the platform specific files), my mp3 collection, desktop, documents, pretty much everything i use on a daily basis.
I also have an archive tree thats not actively checked out anywhere.
DONT PANIC
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.
# (/.);;
- : float -> float -> float =
... 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."
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
We use SourceGear vault at work and it works great. It integrates well with Visual Studio and the provided client is easy to use as well. It does cost money, but it was pretty reasonable compared to the alternatives we looked at ($200 per user), including CVS since it took so long to get setup, there would be a learning curve for everyone, and the extra time it takes for everyone to use it would more than offset the cost.
We tried perforce as well, but it didn't even compare to SourceGear, and we had a lot of problems getting it to work well with Visual Studio .NET, for web-based projects especially.
The best source control system I ever used was in VisualAge for Java from IBM. I used it on a big Java project at one of my clients. It was integrated with the IDE and tracked changes to individual methods in the classes you were working on. Every time you saved, it would store that version in your local repository. I liked being able to version and name each class, package, and project. You can call them anything you want, but if you put numbers at the end, it will automatically increment them the next time (i.e. naming something "SSTP 1.4.1" will let you automatically version it to be "SSTP 1.4.2" without having to type anything. The local repository was in one big file that held all your changes until you version something to the server. You could even copy that file and take it somewhere else and keep all your changes. I was thinking of writing something similar in C#, anyone else interested?
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.
I'm currently using FreeVCS 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-developer projects (like the one I'm on).
perl -e 'printf("mmm %x\n", 3735928559)'
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.