Choosing VCS for Single Developer, Small Projects, Two PC's, Two Locations

[Phil J Pearson]

You may find that Dropbox (free here[^]) is the best way to do it. It's not version control (although it does have some limited ability to do that) but you could keep your codebase in it and have it automatically synchronised across as many machines as you wish.

Phil

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The opinions expressed in this post are not necessarily those of the author, especially if you find them impolite, inaccurate or inflammatory.

[M Badger]

Thanks for all the answers. I've looked at Git (not yet GitHub) and Bazaar (plus looked into Launchpad a little). When I installed both of those it felt a little like overkill with the consequent learning curve in order to do something fairly simple, hence this thread to see if there was something else that was built for a more simple job, rather than being big and flexible (but complex) enough for any and every size of project. Remember I haven't used VCS for software projects, so this is all new to me, commit, branch, fork, trunk etc. - at a high level easy enough to understand but when you have something practical to do it's not that easy to actually implement it if you've never done it before! So, someone said "You can use anything you want" - I guess what I was hoping for was something like, "When you just need something simple, this tool is great...", even if it didn't upscale that well (or at all) should I ever want to get into something more serious. So, if there is a specific answer like that - great :) If not then I guess I'll just have to plump for one and break it a few times until I learn how not to break it... Mike

[lewax00]

Mike-MadBadger wrote:

so this is all new to me, commit, branch, fork, trunk etc.

For small personal projects you probably only need commit (and push, if you use a system like Git/Mercurial), checkout/clone (to get the files the first time), and update/pull to get any changes from the server. But you can hide most of that through a GUI tool like TortoiseSvn/TortoiseGit/Tortoise[insert other VCS here] if you're on Windows.

[lewax00]

Well you could host an SVN repository on a USB stick, and probably install something like TortoiseSvn on the stick (though, you'd lose out on things like the icon overlays) if you really wanted to.

[PIEBALDconsult]

That doesn't mean that he can't use a version control system.

[AspDotNetDev]

For my personal projects, I am currently using SmartSVN (a visual Subversion client, $80) with CodeSpaces (a place to store your Subversion repository, $4+/month). CodeSpaces is easy/cheap and allows for both Subversion and Git repositories. It has other features (project management, bug tracking, ...), but I don't use them. SmartSVN is standalone, so it doesn't require integration with Visual Studio or Windows Explorer (I consider that a positive, as I don't want my VCS software messing with my other software).

Thou mewling ill-breeding pignut!

[Terrence Dorsey]

+1 for Dropbox. It does have limited versioning... enough for fooling around. Git is also handy if you're not trying to do anything fancy and don't mind the command line. Between GitHub and other software resource that use git, it's worth having at least some familiarity. Here are a few git-related articles I've featured in the Daily Insider during the last year: Think Like (a) Git Nick Farina - Git Is Simpler Than You Think Adding Git Command Line To Visual Studio

Director of Content Development, The Code Project

[peterchen]

git, becsue - distributed DVCS are addictive - git is the "lowes common denominator everyone agrees on". It's a pain to learn, and both the built-in and the 3rd party visualizations give me UX flinches. Other than that, it does most things right. DVCS gives you rollbacks on stereoids. But that's not the key: they can change how you work with source code.

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| FoldWithUs! | sighist | WhoIncludes - Analyzing C++ include file hierarchy

[M Badger]

Once again, thanks to all. Looks like I need to go off andlearn how to play nicely with a VCS and a hosting site like GitHub or Launchpad. Ho hum. Thanks again. Mike

[Dave Kreskowiak]

Tell that to Microsoft. According to them, you also can't create something that will offer that functionality either. Just ask the guy who wrote TestDriven.net about that.

A guide to posting questions on CodeProject[^]
Dave Kreskowiak

[Brisingr Aerowing]

I use TortiseHG[^] and BitBucket[^] for version control (I have VS 2010 Ultimate, BTW). TortiseHG is kind of finicky to get working, but once you know how to use it, you can get changes pushed online rather quickly.

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[PIEBALDconsult]

Then explain Subversion, et al.

[Dave Kreskowiak]

I'd love to but there's no explaining lawyer logic! ;)

A guide to posting questions on CodeProject[^]
Dave Kreskowiak

[glenner003]

But it's not because you can't extend VS that you are unable to use a version control system. You can use one from the command line or use a client like tortoise. You'll learn more about source control too.

[Alberto Biasiutti]

Don't know if anyone already suggested that, but I'm using Plastic SCM and I am quite satisfied by the product. It has some "advanced" futures, but it's quite simple for the base use. It's free up to 15 "client" installations, so it may be a good solution for you. It will optionally add scm actions to controlled files and folder via explorer. Only "limitation", you won't have integration in VS Express.. note: in any case, you will have to register and obtain a free license. Alberto

[John Oxley]

I'd say you should look at mercurial and git. I would recommend mercurial because I use it and like it, although I haven't been able to find a real difference between the two. Slight syntactic differences but... For hosting, I like Bitbucket. You can have an unlimited number of private repositories with 5 users. On Github, you can have unlimited collaborators, but only 5 private repositories. For VS I use a combination of VisualHG (I have the pro version) and TortoiseHG and command line HG.

[Kevin Bewley]

Mercurial's what I use. Lightweight, easy to use but also pretty scalable.

[marinnn]

+1 for bitbucket, you have free private repositories and option of using bit or hg. Both hg and bit have widows clients - tortoise, and for single developer they aren't to complicated. SVN in my opinion is little bit simpler and there is number of hosting for about few $ per month.

Marin

[doc_net]

You sound very similar to me and it took me a long time to finally get round to using version control. Let me just say this - it is completely worth it. It is not so much about being able to roll back (which is very handy nonetheless), but it forces you to think about what you are doing and to break your coding down into small bite-size chunks which in the long run is very beneficial. I think we can break your post down into two very simple statements: I need to synchronise my files between multiple PCs. I which to use simple version control (commits and rollbacks). For the first statement I would highly recommend DropBox. I use it between the 3 different PCs I tend to use and even on my iPhone. It is the most stable file synchronisation tool I have seen and is free up to a certain size (2GB last time I looked). Now you have your files synchronised, you could use any version control system you liked. For the second statement I would recommend msysgit (Git for Windows) with TortoiseGit to make it simpler. TortoiseGit gives you a right-click context menu so you do not need to learn any command line functions. It is not built into VS, but all you have to do is keep a windows explorer view of your project folder open so you can jump in there and run some git commands when required. It also gives you very clear icons of the status of all of your directories and files (committed, modified, added, etc.). This was the best article on Git I have read: http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/[^] Now it does talk about branching a lot (which you may not want to do at first - you may change your mind after reading it), but it also has the clearest diagrams showing how git works. Hopefully this will help your get your head round how it all fits together. TL;DR I recommend TortoiseGit with DropBox.

[PhilipOakley]

.. and you can use the github on-line browse functionality to see what you changed and where (e.g. blame)