Source control: mandatory or not
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John Cardinal wrote:
Yup and you know me well enough to know by now I've said something similar a thousand times about other technology. Cmon, you just know I'm grinning away when I'm typing some of this stuff.
yup, and laughing at every 1 because you managed to get the room riled up to a fury pitch! Every place has a trouble maker. ;) John, when the Nurse slapped you to make you start breathing, I bet you slapped her right back or at very least vomitted something disgusting on her and smiled as big as you are right now. just be glad you don't need the branch merge, because without a source control, your customers would have you running powers of two times the work for every customer change. branch merge barely keeps it under control.
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
El Corazon wrote:
Every place has a trouble maker.
Hey I don't make trouble I just question assumptions. :)
El Corazon wrote:
just be glad you don't need the branch merge
I used to write custom software for different customers in the oil and gas and related industries and I know intimately the work required for that kind of stuff and it's precisely why we only make commercial software now and when anyone asks us if we can customize it for them we say sure for 500,000 dollars minimum we can look at doing that for you. :) The only way to make serious money in this business is to write once, sell as many times as possible.
Never trust machinery more complicated than a knife and fork. - Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land
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My assertion was that it's not mandatory and is in fact harmful for a small shop with just a few programmers (3 or less). A lot of this stuff has been foisted on to programmers by corporate types who are trying to turn software development into a factory process like stamping out microwave ovens. That's fine if you work in a factory but I have a small shop and we are craftsmen not assembly line workers and nearly any modern software development methodology that is the buzzword of the day simply makes no sense in a smaller craftsman software development shop. I reject agile development, I reject source control, I reject gannt charts, I reject UML diagramming, I reject a lot of things because any sane, logical examination shows them to be unnecessary overcomplication for my situation. Those are all tools to deal with mashing together a large number of programmers and trying to make them act as one entity. That's fine for what it's designed for but far too often I see people asking here about these things for their one man projects and shops and we all have to be careful to realize that one size does not in fact fit all and everyone's perspective is based on their situation that they are in. You simply can not say with any degree of accuracy that source control is always mandatory. I've been *extremely* sucessful doing what I do the way I do it and my perspective is always from the point of view of a craftsman not a cubicle jockey (not that there's anything wrong with that ;) ). If every poster here could have some sort of icon that represents the situation they are in, size of shop, type of software etc then discussions would be much more productive because you could look and balance someone's assertion with their situation and judge it appropriately.
Never trust machinery more complicated than a knife and fork. - Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land
Hrmmm... While I don't agree that source control SOFTWARE is mandatory, some kind of source control PROCESS is, in my opinion. Without it, you cannot adequately manage multiple developers (even 2) working on the same project (unless they never touch each others code) and you're kind of screwed if you need to maintain multiple releases of the same software. Source control software comes in many flavors, from the simple to the insanely complex. It makes little sense to do this by hand when there is likely a tool out there that will fit whatever process you want to use. Having said that, I can't imagine how source control can be "harmful". Can you explain that?
-- Where are we going? And why am I in this handbasket?
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Hrmmm... While I don't agree that source control SOFTWARE is mandatory, some kind of source control PROCESS is, in my opinion. Without it, you cannot adequately manage multiple developers (even 2) working on the same project (unless they never touch each others code) and you're kind of screwed if you need to maintain multiple releases of the same software. Source control software comes in many flavors, from the simple to the insanely complex. It makes little sense to do this by hand when there is likely a tool out there that will fit whatever process you want to use. Having said that, I can't imagine how source control can be "harmful". Can you explain that?
-- Where are we going? And why am I in this handbasket?
We never have more than one developer working on the same area of code at the same time, we do not maintain multiple releases as we make commercial "off the shelf software" and avoid multiple releases like the plague for many reasons chiefly you can go broke trying to please specific customers. Multiple releases go against everything that makes you money as a software company. Write *once* sell many times makes you money and ensures happy customers because of all the time and complexity saved that can be plowed directly into the single trunk project. We do have a source control process of a kind, I would never refer to it as that, more of a kick ass backup system consisting of nothing more than batch files, command line winzip, cd burner and zip tape drive with 10 tape *off site* rotation system. I can if I ever need to restore any one of 30 copies of active projects from any period within the last decade to as recently as the last time I got up from my computer during a work day, it's never been required but if it was I can do it. A source control system is dangerous in that your code is in a much more fragile place, you tend to start relying on it, there is a post here at minimum once a month about some source control software disaster or problem and it seems to take up a lot of developers time, time best spent writing code, not frigging around with tools that are completely unnecessary. Of course as I've said and will say again because some people are too thick apparently to get it (not you, others) I am speaking for my own situation with my own company only. What is appropriate for us may ver well not be appropriate for others so if anyone disagrees then I welcome them to set up an identical company, write identical software, do it for a decade sucessfully and come back and show me where my opinion is wrong. Sorry to rant but I've had to deal with a lot of narrow minded dogmatic people on this an other issues who can't seem to understand that in fact we aren't all dead eyed corporate cogs working in "campuses" sitting in cubicle farms all day in an assembly line software factory. :)
Never trust machinery more complicated than a knife and fork. - Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land
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Following this discussion[^] with Mr Cardinal, it seems there are very contrasted opinions on the subject. What do CPians think about it? Mandatory when your job is producing code or not?
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Following this discussion[^] with Mr Cardinal, it seems there are very contrasted opinions on the subject. What do CPians think about it? Mandatory when your job is producing code or not?
Some form of backup system seems like a wise move. Now, Source Control do have it's benefits but occasionally it can be overkill. In my case they just sits there and takes up space on the drives/servers -- I've needed to go back and check twice:-> in the last 25 years. Once was changes done more than three years ago (use check-in comment and labels), once was just a month or so old code but a massive amount of changes (took over a resource management system... written in VB6:omg:... No, I do not want to talk about it, the wounds are to fresh). Conclusion -- Mandatory (some form of...). You never know when it would have had been nice to have:-D
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Following this discussion[^] with Mr Cardinal, it seems there are very contrasted opinions on the subject. What do CPians think about it? Mandatory when your job is producing code or not?
I'd say that procedural/operational source control is mandatory, in any case. This does not necessarily imply that is implemented by means of functional/technical source control. For small teams, this can be an overkill. In my case, working in a 100+ programmers environment with multiple projects, we're on VSTS+TFS+clustered mirroring. The full-fledged MS stack is extremely beneficial in a large environment, with branching of versions, shared checkins, merging, shelving, and numerous dependencies to be guarded (in spite of component-based development ;-) However, it does mean having a full-time configuration manager and the technical facilities and personnel in place to be able to do that. Not an option for relatively small environments. The whole shabang of course is not by any means a guarantee for productivity and quality. Smaller teams are usually more effective and efficient on these counts ;-) Regards, Arjan Keene
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Following this discussion[^] with Mr Cardinal, it seems there are very contrasted opinions on the subject. What do CPians think about it? Mandatory when your job is producing code or not?
I would never work without it - even for solo projects. I've played the "zipfile game" before, and it's dangerous to say the least. Never again.
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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Again, we are a very small shop and I couched all my statements within that frame of reference. I simply don't see an advantage for a shop with 3 or less people in it. We are all working on completely different areas / aspects of the project at the time there is zero chance another person is going to touch our own area of responsibility. I don't have any experience working with a large team of programmers and I'm always careful to scope what I say within that frame but sadly that seems to have gone unnoticed by most everyone. If a 1 man shop developer tells me they need a source control system I tell them they are full of shit and wasting time playing with tools that a simple batch file and archiver could more simply and easily acheive. At the end of the day I want to be writing code, not farting around with unnecessary steps. Perhaps working in a small shop that I am entirely responsible and paying for I have a clearer understanding of what's truly important and what is just dragging you down. We work on a razor's edge to be able to do the size of projects we do with the limited resources we have and that is the kind of situation that hones my processes over the years to a very fine point.
Never trust machinery more complicated than a knife and fork. - Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land
John Cardinal wrote:
If a 1 man shop developer tells me they need a source control system I tell them they are full of sh*t and wasting time playing with tools that a simple batch file and archiver could more simply and easily acheive.
That's a pretty daft statement, if you ask me. I do 90% of the development for Riverblade, so we're almost in that category. Nevertheless, both Beth and I consider SCC (even VSS, for all its failings) absolutely essential, and I regularly spawn new repositories or branches for new developments - even if I'm going to be the only one working on it. I certainly don't consider myself "full of shit" for wanting to use tools which allow us to check in incremental changes regularly and be able to instantly see what's happened to a file or project over its entire lifetime without opening several dozen zipfiles... For the record, we work pretty close to the wire too, so I don't tolerate slack any more than you do. VSS is free (via MSDN) and easy to administer for a codebase of our size. The risks are low for us (I know the thing backwards, and an automated backup goes out everynight), and the benefits are high. Why make life difficult, after all?
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
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Following this discussion[^] with Mr Cardinal, it seems there are very contrasted opinions on the subject. What do CPians think about it? Mandatory when your job is producing code or not?
It depends on the project and team. One person trying to figure out an API does not need revision control. Large teams need it at least to keep changes straight between developers. I make it a habit to check (compare) my changes prior to commit to ensure that I have not left something in the code (like a System.Out), and that I have dealt with any TODOs or notes I added while making the change. Other developers may have different approaches they use for this. In general I would say it is a good idea.
Tanks for your support
Pat O
Blog_ _ _
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<ooo> <ooo> <ooo> -
Optional if you have a project wiht one developer, and it zips in five seconds or less. Multiple people working on the same code base? Hacking features for 2.0 during the beta phase for 1.0? Automated clean builds? Who the phuket added this line of crap? Source Control. (ok, ok, I was)
We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
My first real C# project | Linkify!|FoldWithUs! | sighistI do alot of work by myself, but I use source control. There are a number of free source control systems. I currently use Sourcegear vault, which is free for single users. http://www.sourcegear.com/faq.html[^] Quote: "Yes. Both Vault and Fortress are free of cost when used by a single user." Doing a diff on previous version to the current version is more difficult with just a collection of zip files. However, I also burn all my source code directly to CD or DVD periodically, along with the repository backups.
Michael Lang (versat1474) http://www.xquisoft.com/[^]
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Absolutely mandatory - even for a one-man shop. I can't even imagine a professional developer questioning it.
Nemanja Trifunovic wrote:
Absolutely mandatory - even for a one-man shop.
Source code backup process - yes, mandatory. Actual Source control software - absolutely not. I am a professional developer, have been since pre PC days. I do not have Source Control. I do have regular backups of source files. I was in charge of the source control and documentation library for a large company. Developers were different people than maintainers. I am well versed in what it does and what it does not do for the organization, where and why it's needed. It is absolutely NOT necessary in a small shop. I don't need the headaches, overhead, nor wasted time. We don't support multiple versions of the same product. Copying working directories before making major changes is sufficient. Backing up live directories to Zip files and then to CD and hard Disk is absolutely sufficient. Again, small shop. No two people work on the same thing. To have others foist their methodologies on my operations because they don't have the structure, knowledge nor experience is just dumb. :mad: I can take any backup, unzip it onto a development machine, and have 100% of what I need to duplicate the object code. I need nothing else - no intermediate files, modified make files, previous versions, later versions, nothing. I don't need a separate Source Control Server to maintain. Simple, sweet, does the job 100%. :) Now, if someone can explain to me why this does not work, I'll listen. But my (extensive) experience has proven that it works just fine, thank you very much.
Gary
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Following this discussion[^] with Mr Cardinal, it seems there are very contrasted opinions on the subject. What do CPians think about it? Mandatory when your job is producing code or not?
Heresy. I believe in the power of source control, and I recommend smiting the admin not backing up the repository offsite. There are dozens of reasons to use source control from disaster recovery to blaming the right coder. Because there are so many free, solid, and integrated version control systems, there is no excuse for not using them.
Cheers, Daaron
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I would never work without it - even for solo projects. I've played the "zipfile game" before, and it's dangerous to say the least. Never again.
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
Anna-Jayne Metcalfe wrote:
I've played the "zipfile game" before, and it's dangerous to say the least
Not as dangerous as playing the 'Hmmm - the VMS filesystem has version numbers - let's use that for source control' game...'cause then your quota will start to run low, you'll do a casual recursive
PURGEand all those previous versions will disappear, as if by magic. And yes, this is a tale from experience - not mine, thankfully - I used CMS, the VMS equivalent of RCS. -
K(arl) wrote:
it seems there are very contrasted opinions on the subject.
I think it has more to do with experiences. It is like someone hating Ford because they had a lemon once. In this case it would be more akin to someone hating all trucks because his hatchback can handle everything he needs. In the case of source control, it is a learning experience. And an extra tool. John made excellent scripts :~ though I am not sure I would ever go back, I used to do that too. One of our programmers was dead set against any kind of backups or source control. If they wanted to keep things up to date, they should ask for his source code and they should guard it. Otherwise, he gets paid to write it or rewrite it at the same wage. After he left, and I became the senior programmer, I still didn't get changes done right away, but I could at least start dropping the hints. After we got in another programmer, and after a big incident with code getting lost, the two of us managed to get things going. All in all a source control system is an extra step, extra complexity. If you don't understand it, you will hate it like Mr. Cardinal -- or in his case he probably did have some bad experiences. I do not completely rely on source control either. I trust it, but I trust backups even better. The source control server itself has a mirror, and a backup out of the building. So I do understand John's mistrust of source control. However, I learned a long time ago the advantages, and the advantages far out weigh the complexities. As long as John works at the same company, and never takes a government contract, he'll be fine, until he is not. But then the same goes for any of us, no solution is perfect, which is why there are backups. I solved the "not enough in source control to complete the build" problem that airs in the lounge every quarter or so. I keep a build environment on multiple machines (2), plus a laptop on irregular intervals, and I take a source-control image home. Since I do work from home on occasion, this gives me the ability to verify my source images.
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
El Corazon wrote:
but I trust backups even better
Amen! :rose:
El Corazon wrote:
The source control server itself has a mirror, and a backup out of the building.
So, we have a development machine, a SC server, a mirror, and another backup. That's 4 machines.
El Corazon wrote:
I keep a build environment on multiple machines (2), plus a laptop on irregular intervals, and I take a source-control image home
Add in another machine, a laptop, and one at home. Total of 7 machines, and he still trusts backups even better! So one of you proponents please explain why my small shop needs to maintain all this crap????? It generates no revenue whatsoever. One goal is to minimize cost to increase profit. Totally absurd in a small shop. Absolutely absurd in a one-man shop. I'm smiling as I admire the latest release source CD on the shelf. Simple, sweet, cheap, easy, convenient. :) The additional backups are a few pennies in cost.
Gary
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John Cardinal wrote:
If a 1 man shop developer tells me they need a source control system I tell them they are full of sh*t and wasting time playing with tools that a simple batch file and archiver could more simply and easily acheive.
That's a pretty daft statement, if you ask me. I do 90% of the development for Riverblade, so we're almost in that category. Nevertheless, both Beth and I consider SCC (even VSS, for all its failings) absolutely essential, and I regularly spawn new repositories or branches for new developments - even if I'm going to be the only one working on it. I certainly don't consider myself "full of shit" for wanting to use tools which allow us to check in incremental changes regularly and be able to instantly see what's happened to a file or project over its entire lifetime without opening several dozen zipfiles... For the record, we work pretty close to the wire too, so I don't tolerate slack any more than you do. VSS is free (via MSDN) and easy to administer for a codebase of our size. The risks are low for us (I know the thing backwards, and an automated backup goes out everynight), and the benefits are high. Why make life difficult, after all?
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
Anna-Jayne Metcalfe wrote:
If a 1 man shop developer
Hmmm, I don't think this applies to you and Beth. ;)
Anna-Jayne Metcalfe wrote:
VSS is free (via MSDN)... (even VSS, for all its failings)
And for non-MSDN shops the cost is?
Anna-Jayne Metcalfe wrote:
Why make life difficult, after all?
Indeed. Why? :confused: Zip files work quite fine. No small potatoes either, well over 100K lines of code, 1000+ files. What amazes me is the people that have to go back to previous versions to see what they changed because they broke something. Sure, online, instant recall, what did I change tools (i.e., SC) may be required for that. Personally, we don't need them in our small shop. There is a lack of need. Archival is sufficient.
Gary
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K(arl) wrote:
Mandatory
Abso-frickin-lutely - I don't give a rat's ass what size of team you're on - source control is vital. It gives you the freedom to change code in the knowledge that you have a position to recover to. And it's not just code. Why not documents as well?
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We never have more than one developer working on the same area of code at the same time, we do not maintain multiple releases as we make commercial "off the shelf software" and avoid multiple releases like the plague for many reasons chiefly you can go broke trying to please specific customers. Multiple releases go against everything that makes you money as a software company. Write *once* sell many times makes you money and ensures happy customers because of all the time and complexity saved that can be plowed directly into the single trunk project. We do have a source control process of a kind, I would never refer to it as that, more of a kick ass backup system consisting of nothing more than batch files, command line winzip, cd burner and zip tape drive with 10 tape *off site* rotation system. I can if I ever need to restore any one of 30 copies of active projects from any period within the last decade to as recently as the last time I got up from my computer during a work day, it's never been required but if it was I can do it. A source control system is dangerous in that your code is in a much more fragile place, you tend to start relying on it, there is a post here at minimum once a month about some source control software disaster or problem and it seems to take up a lot of developers time, time best spent writing code, not frigging around with tools that are completely unnecessary. Of course as I've said and will say again because some people are too thick apparently to get it (not you, others) I am speaking for my own situation with my own company only. What is appropriate for us may ver well not be appropriate for others so if anyone disagrees then I welcome them to set up an identical company, write identical software, do it for a decade sucessfully and come back and show me where my opinion is wrong. Sorry to rant but I've had to deal with a lot of narrow minded dogmatic people on this an other issues who can't seem to understand that in fact we aren't all dead eyed corporate cogs working in "campuses" sitting in cubicle farms all day in an assembly line software factory. :)
Never trust machinery more complicated than a knife and fork. - Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land
I hate to break this to you, but you do in fact have a source control process. You just created it yourself. And i'd dare say you have probably spent just as much time creating, tweaking, and using that process than most people spend on version control software. While it's true that some people have problems with source control, most people don't. You seem to think that this is the normal state of affairs. For the vast majority of people it' s a largely invisible process until they need it for something. Some source control works better than others. SourceSafe has been infamous for database corruptions, for instance. However, SourceSafe's problems are easy to manage if you know what you're doing. Honestly, i've been using source control for close to 20 years, and the vast majority of the time I don't spend more than 10 minutes on it, setting up the projects and what not. I use source control even on my own personal projects because I just find it brain dead easier to manage things. You backup the source database nightly and have your backup policy, just like you do, and you're done with it. If you're using a reliable source control system (or know how to mitigate a potentially unreliable one) and keep good backups, you just don't have the dangerous problems you are alluding to. And it shouldn't take any time away from your coding. I'd also like to submit that you've never actually had to rely on your process yet to recover. Suppose one day you realize that you made a change sometime in the last 6 months that's causing a problem and you need to go back to that change, but you don't remember when it was. Now you're stuck having to restore multiple backups, using disparate tools to find that change, while I could do the same in virtually any source control tool in seconds, a minute or two at most. Both systems have their advantages and drawbacks. I'm glad yours works for you. But you get the kinds of responses you do because you phrase things in such a way as to make it seem like everyone should think like you do. Instead of saying "Source control is dangerous and a waste of time and money" you might consider saying "For our purposes, we don't need a fancy system and rely on our own backups, we feel it's safer, more efficient, and cheaper for us" or something similar. I doubt anyone would begrudge you your opinions for your own work.
Where are we going? And why am I in this handbasket?
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Heresy. I believe in the power of source control, and I recommend smiting the admin not backing up the repository offsite. There are dozens of reasons to use source control from disaster recovery to blaming the right coder. Because there are so many free, solid, and integrated version control systems, there is no excuse for not using them.
Cheers, Daaron
Daaron wrote:
disaster recovery
Archives and back-ups work just fine. Source control not mandatory nor needed.
Daaron wrote:
blaming the right coder
Not necessary nor productive in a small shop. It was me, me, me - shoot self in foot. Remember to decrease own pay at next self-review. :)
Daaron wrote:
so many free, solid, and integrated version control systems, there is no excuse for not using them
Not a valid reason. Corollary - So much free porn - must use. No excuse not to. Oooh, bad example. Of course, maintaining the server(s), putting in latest security fixes, upgrades, SC software updates, etc., etc., etc. is also free. Just pray the fix pack doesn't break the Source Control server, 'cause then I've got a real mess on my hands. This all takes away from the task of writing software. X|
Gary
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Following this discussion[^] with Mr Cardinal, it seems there are very contrasted opinions on the subject. What do CPians think about it? Mandatory when your job is producing code or not?
If you're: * all alone * never have to do any sort of maintenance on the code (while you're developing new features), and * don't mind not being able to figure out what you changed when you totally hose your project while making some changes, then no, it isn't mandatory. In all other cases, it is. As for the comment about proper backups.. you either properly back up your systems or you don't. Doesn't matter whether some of that data is a source control repository or not.
patbob
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John Cardinal wrote:
If a 1 man shop developer tells me they need a source control system I tell them they are full of sh*t and wasting time playing with tools that a simple batch file and archiver could more simply and easily acheive.
That's a pretty daft statement, if you ask me. I do 90% of the development for Riverblade, so we're almost in that category. Nevertheless, both Beth and I consider SCC (even VSS, for all its failings) absolutely essential, and I regularly spawn new repositories or branches for new developments - even if I'm going to be the only one working on it. I certainly don't consider myself "full of shit" for wanting to use tools which allow us to check in incremental changes regularly and be able to instantly see what's happened to a file or project over its entire lifetime without opening several dozen zipfiles... For the record, we work pretty close to the wire too, so I don't tolerate slack any more than you do. VSS is free (via MSDN) and easy to administer for a codebase of our size. The risks are low for us (I know the thing backwards, and an automated backup goes out everynight), and the benefits are high. Why make life difficult, after all?
Anna :rose: Linting the day away :cool: Anna's Place | Tears and Laughter "If mushy peas are the food of the devil, the stotty cake is the frisbee of God"
Anna my dear you missed the bit in this thread where I was talking to Jeffrey um sorry ElCorazon about the increasingly tongue in cheek nature of my posts in this thread after the initial villification I received for daring to go against the doctrine of the church of the dogmatic cubicle jockey. I started out by stating what worked for us in our shop in our circumstances, people went wide eyed and foaming at the mouth to tell me I was crazy to not use source control and ignored the part about how we have a system that works well for us and has for over a decade so I decided since no one was really listening to me I might as well poke the bees nest a little bit. In fact I've become convinced enough to look into it again supposedly there is a free one out there that works well and I'm about to start back in on our largest project for a new maint. and new major upgrade release so I'll see if it's of any use.
Never trust machinery more complicated than a knife and fork. - Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land