Another question about source control tools

[Luis Alonso Ramos]

If I'm going to buy something, then it'll be Vault and not SourceOffSite. I'm thinking about SourceSafe because I already have it, but overall I'm very happy with Vault. It's just that I read that SS 2005 has better remote support. -- LuisR

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Luis Alonso Ramos Intelectix - Chihuahua, Mexico Not much here: My CP Blog!

The amount of sleep the average person needs is five more minutes. -- Vikram A Punathambekar, Aug. 11, 2005

[Luis Alonso Ramos]

Everyone always talks about Subversion here (and TortoiseSVN)... is it really that good? -- LuisR

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Luis Alonso Ramos Intelectix - Chihuahua, Mexico Not much here: My CP Blog!

The amount of sleep the average person needs is five more minutes. -- Vikram A Punathambekar, Aug. 11, 2005

[Shog9 0]

Luis Alonso Ramos wrote:

is it really that good?

Eh... it's sufficient, while SS often isn't. I have a hard time getting wildly excited about source control - it's very useful, and i'd argue necessary in any kind of team environment... but it's kinda like talking about file managers - at the end of the day, either they do what they're supposed to or they don't. Pass/fail. SS just plain won't do a fair number of things that i need, and so it ends up costing time and adding mistakes to my workflow. Subversion is, i donno, Norton Commander to SS's DOSSHELL.

---- Scripts i've known... CPhog 0.9.9 - make CP better. Forum Bookmark 0.2.1 - bookmark forum posts on Pensieve Print forum 0.1.2 - printer-friendly forums

[ToddHileHoffer]

The development team I work with has been testing out Vault and so far the results are positive. Another thing VS 2005 requires a licensed 2005 SQL Server. "People who never make mistakes, never do anything." My Blog -- modified at 13:09 Friday 6th January, 2006

[Luis Alonso Ramos]

ToddHileHoffer wrote:

The development team I work with has been testing out Vault and so far the results are positive

Yes, I've tested it personally. But since I haven't used SS, I don't know if Vault is really ($289 x 3) dollars better!

ToddHileHoffer wrote:

thing VS 2005 requires a licensed 2005 SQL Server.

I have that in my Action Pack. -- LuisR

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Luis Alonso Ramos Intelectix - Chihuahua, Mexico Not much here: My CP Blog!

The amount of sleep the average person needs is five more minutes. -- Vikram A Punathambekar, Aug. 11, 2005

[Luis Alonso Ramos]

I know SS has been very bad, for I was hoping SS 2005 had been vastly improved. After all, it's been 7 years since the last SS 6.0. -- LuisR

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Luis Alonso Ramos Intelectix - Chihuahua, Mexico Not much here: My CP Blog!

The amount of sleep the average person needs is five more minutes. -- Vikram A Punathambekar, Aug. 11, 2005

[TheGreatAndPowerfulOz]

Luis Alonso Ramos wrote:

If I'm going to buy something, then it'll be Vault and not SourceOffSite

Well good call. But if cost is an issue... then maybe it's a choice. But, my VCS of choice is Peforce[^]. So if you do choose to go the more costly route, then consider Perforce. However, at $800 (US) a seat, it's definately more costly.

[Luis Alonso Ramos]

I read about Perforce being good, but that's more than I can afford. I'm thinking about choosing Vault. The general opinion here seems to be that SS is just not good. -- LuisR

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Luis Alonso Ramos Intelectix - Chihuahua, Mexico Not much here: My CP Blog!

The amount of sleep the average person needs is five more minutes. -- Vikram A Punathambekar, Aug. 11, 2005

[Jared Parsons]

Luis Alonso Ramos wrote:

Everyone always talks about Subversion here (and TortoiseSVN)... is it really that good?

That depends :) For those of us who are quite enthusiastic about source code control so much that we use it at home it's great. It's free and it does almost everything you could want a source control system to do. Part of the reason a lot of us feel that it's great is that we've been stuck using CVS up until Subversion. The major downfall of subversion IMHO is the hosting solutions. If you want to host Subversion yourself you must either 1) Host it through Apache 2) Host it via SSH However it's also great to just get someone else to host it for you. I prefer www.wush.net. Cheap, efficient and great uptime. Jared Parsons jaredp@beanseed.org http://jaredparsons.blogspot.com/[^]

[code frog 0]

Okay...

With PVCS being the last version control system I used (and hated) I decided to get away from SourceSafe (hold the tomatoes please) and try Subversion with TortoiseSVN. I've got a wad of Linux and Windows servers to choose from. Honestly though setting up something like this on Linux is just *too* easy (not kidding either tar it config it run it, easy). So I decided to get it up and running on my Windows 2003 Small Business Server. In a nutshell I blew most of my afternoon on this as I had to answer phones, fix a few client software problems the usual Friday burn.

Here's what I wound up using and the whole process should be working in under 30 minutes.

As you follow the links this is the process I used.

On the server:
*One click subversion installer.
*Tortoise GUI front-end (restart required)
//--Follow steps below--//

On all clients:
* Tortoise GUI front-end (restart required)

Get the SVN installer and related junk (skip this and use this):
One Click Subversion Installer[^]

Get the Tortoise (GUI Subversion Front-End from here):
Tortoise SVN GUI[^]

You've got it installed but you haven't done anything with it. Use this guide for setting up a subversion server for Unreal builds. Obviously quit where it gets unreal specific and you're good to go.
Subversion for Unreal[^]

After you get the service running click the "Setting up subversion" link in the above tutorial or click here:
The subversion project details...[

[Luis Alonso Ramos]

Thanks Rex. As always, great answer from you. I'll set up my own server using these guides during the weekend, trying to get a feel for Subversion. Then I'll be in a better position to judge. :) Thanks! -- LuisR

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Luis Alonso Ramos Intelectix - Chihuahua, Mexico Not much here: My CP Blog!

The amount of sleep the average person needs is five more minutes. -- Vikram A Punathambekar, Aug. 11, 2005

[Tad McClellan]

I've only used VSS since 1996'ish so I'm speaking out of ignorance here. I see a lot of angst against VSS so my question is what is it specifically that people don't like? Now that VSS 2005 can be accessed via HTTP it seems pretty good to me but then again I don't know anything else. E=mc2 -> BOOM

[code frog 0]

I forgot the Tortoise link it's added in now it's the 2nd link I refer to.

Some assembly required. Code-frog System Architects, Inc.

[code frog 0]

Luis Alonso Ramos wrote:

Thanks Rex. As always, great answer from you.

Think just how awesome this place might be if everyone spent the 20 or 30 minutes it takes to offer a great answer here and there... As it is we do a pretty good job but if we all tried a bit harder... Man, we'd be kings!!!:cool:

Some assembly required. Code-frog System Architects, Inc.

[Luis Alonso Ramos]

code-frog wrote:

this place might be if everyone spent the 20 or 30 minutes it takes to offer a great answer

Yes I know. More often that not spending that extra minute to get a link or to explain in a little more detail is a hundred times more helpful to those reading the post. I really appreciate the time you took with your post, and because you made it look easy, I'll actually give it some time tomorrow to install and test Subversion. Thanks again :) -- LuisR

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Luis Alonso Ramos Intelectix - Chihuahua, Mexico Not much here: My CP Blog!

The amount of sleep the average person needs is five more minutes. -- Vikram A Punathambekar, Aug. 11, 2005

[code frog 0]

Luis Alonso Ramos wrote:

and because you made it look easy

That's what kept me from doing it for so long. It was just a headache I didn't need. Today I decided to go for it. I got SVN installed and I got Tortoise installed. I couldn't get anything to link up and work. :sigh: I was almost ready to give up when I did a google for "subversion server windows" and that's when I got the unreal hit. I went and looked at that post and that guy makes it easy. He tells you how to setup the subversion server as a service (you have to get the Windows Server resource kit for that, no problem though you can use it on XP or 2000 you just need two files that let you make an .exe into a service). He then went into some very simple but show stopping steps (if you don't know them) for setting up a subversion service in the registry. Then starting the service and he takes you from there. He doesn't omit any steps. Had I found his stuff first I would have been up and running across my network in under 30 minutes... Ah well... That's how it goes. Someone makes it easy for everyone you just have to find it... That's the kicker.:cool:

Some assembly required. Code-frog System Architects, Inc.

[leppie]

Luis Alonso Ramos wrote:

Everyone always talks about Subversion here (and TortoiseSVN)... is it really that good?

I find it crap. I dont like source control that soils your source tree... X| xacc.ide-0.1.1.4 - now with LSharp integration and scripting :)

[Jan R Hansen]

Hi, Let me just add that I'm running svn on a windows 2000 server through apache. I was trying to figure out how to set it up when I discovered that the guys doing tortoiseSVN have actually made a step-by-step guide on the tortoiseSVN help file :o) So try this: Install TortoiseSVN on the client (They have JUST release the 1.3 RC1, I think its ok to use) on the client Open the help file and get instructions in chapter 3 on how to install apache and subversion on your server. This way, you can access your repository through http://servername/svn - which means that you can access it from anywhere. Or you can do a vpn to the server first if that is required on your network. Further, you can use WebSVN[^] with some extra apache/php modules to view sourcecode in your browser. With syntax colouring, changelogs, blame-support etc etc. /Jan Do you know why it's important to make fast decisions? Because you give yourself more time to correct your mistakes, when you find out that you made the wrong one. Chris Meech on deciding whether to go to his daughters graduation or a Neil Young concert

[Gary R Wheeler]

I've not used any source control application besides SourceSafe, but here's my two bits: 1. SS doesn't work well remotely. Since it is a pure client application, it operates directly on the files in the data base. For that reason, there's a huge amount of traffic between the client and the data base for even the most trivial of transactions. 2. SS has to be monitored constantly. It includes the 'Analyze' tool to check data base integrity. We've had sufficient problems with SS screwing up that I run Analyze nightly. I also backup a verbatim copy of the data base every night. We have had a couple of occasions where we simply reverted the entire data base to a backup, since the Analyze application couldn't repair the damage. 3. SS doesn't scale well. Once you get past 12-15 users and/or 5 Gb of data in the data base, SS starts corrupting the data base too often. 4. SS integration with Visual Studio is flaky. Studio will 'connect' projects and solutions to SS elements in different ways depending upon how you retrieve them from SS or open them with Studio. The different methods cause different behaviors later on when you perform checkouts, or if you share the project in SS. 5. The client application sucks. The UI hasn't been updated since the original Windows 3.1 application that Microsoft bought and turned into SourceSafe. At my site we use a modified version of the SS resource DLL, where I've resized the most commonly used dialogs so that at least you can see long filenames. 6. While the Automation interface for SS is useful, operations performed with it do not always behave the same as the identical operation performed using the SS client. Speaking of the automation interface, there are a whole pile of activities that I've had to write tool apps for that SS ought to provide natively. I haven't used SourceSafe 2005 yet, but I'm not holding my breath that they've made any significant improvements. We will continue to use it, but we are approaching the limits I mentioned earlier. We currently have ten users, and our data base is at 2.5G. If we grow any more, I'm going to start hunting down a different solution. I've got better things to do with my time than nursemaid SourceSafe.

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[Luis Alonso Ramos]

I'm currently installing Virtual PC to install SVN on it :) -- LuisR

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Luis Alonso Ramos Intelectix - Chihuahua, Mexico Not much here: My CP Blog!

The amount of sleep the average person needs is five more minutes. -- Vikram A Punathambekar, Aug. 11, 2005