A LIST Apart: For People Who Make Websites

No. 266

Discuss: I Wonder What This Button Does

by Mike West

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1 Untitled

trac is also a good bug/ticketing system that interfaces with subversion

posted at 07:21 am on July 25, 2006 by martin lyden

2 Version control rocks!

It’s sad, that so many web developers don’t use version control software. It’s even more sad, that a lot of universities don’t don’t include nothing about version control into their Computer Science programs.

Even when you are working alone, you should place all you projects under version control. In addition to saving your ass when you screw things up, it gives you a nice overview of how the project has evolved over time and answer to questions what the hack were you doing last monday?

posted at 09:59 am on July 25, 2006 by Rene Saarsoo

3 Alternative Uses for Version Control

Subversion is also handy for server config files, not just those of applications. I work alone, so collaboration functions are virtually irrelevant, but version control makes the process of configuring and tweaking Apache, MySQL, etc. not only faster but less stressful.

posted at 11:17 am on July 25, 2006 by Cory Myers

4 This article has inspired me....

...to get off my bum and implement Subversion. We run it at work, and it has been a lifesaver for your internal application development.

Sadly, I don’t use it (yet) in my own web-design business. I spent a majority of the weekend trying to fix a problem with a site (in IE) that I sloppily introduced into functional code while working late on Friday. The problem was that I made a lot of changes and I had copies of incremental code changes in different places on the drive. (Horrow show, isn’t it?)

So, time lost and lessons learned equals solutions implemented.

Thanks for reminding me about something I already knew about. And thanks for the inspiration to get off my bum and implement Subversion! :)

posted at 02:40 pm on July 25, 2006 by Damian Karlson

5 Excellent feedback

Martin: You’re right, Trac is indeed a great tool for groups using Subversion to develop an application. It wraps bug tracking, a development wiki, project planning, and release distribution up into a nice little package. And it’s open source, to boot. Doesn’t get much better than that.

On various projects, I’ve also used FogBugz which is every bit as impressive. It’s really a wonderful program for development environments, and it’s interface runs circles around every other bug reporting/tracking suite I’ve seen.

Rene: I agree completely. I’ve been surprised more times than I’d care to mention by people passing around dated zip files for development. Building and using a repository simply pays for itself over and over again in terms of averted misery… The contextually embedded commentary on the project’s changes over time are a stunningly effective hoard of information, even if the only person seeing them is you.

Cory: Absolutely! Anything that’s critical to a project’s functionality can be wrapped up into your repositories. In fact, some people go a little further than just config files…

posted at 03:14 pm on July 25, 2006 by Mike West

6 A little more help

WinMerge is also your friend .

posted at 03:39 pm on July 25, 2006 by Kev Leitch

7 Branches, Tags & Merging

Subversion is great, but for first time users, maintaining separate development tasks (Branches) and merging changes back into trunk can be quite a headache. It really does take some reading of the documentation to fully figure it out.

Some tips that might be helpful to new users:

  1. If you want to save time on the installation, use the included svnserve daemon instead of apache.
  2. When replacing a file, avoid deleting the old one and dropping the new one in. It’ll break the reference between them. Instead, copy the contents of the new file into the old one.
  3. When creating Branches, include the revision number that it was created from in the commit comments.

posted at 03:58 pm on July 25, 2006 by Luke Bussey

8 Another svn GUI

I’ve been using subversion for about a year now and it kicks some major booty. Keeps those ‘Oh crap!’ moments to a minimum. On the Mac you should try out svnX for a GUI. It doesn’t have every feature of svn implemented yet but it has all the basics that most people need. You can always use the command line to do the rest ;)

posted at 04:43 pm on July 25, 2006 by Clayton Parker

9 More excellent feedback!

Damian: Wonderful! Not the losing data part… The installing and using Subversion part. That’s exactly why I wrote the article! :)

Kev and Clayton: Thanks for the links. I haven’t really found a GUI I like yet, but I’m a little odd and live on the command line anyway. So keep those suggestions coming, I’d love to see them.

When the commenting dies down here, I’ll wrap all the GUI suggestions up and see if we can either add them to the resources section of the article or just add them in as a summary comment at the end.

Luke: You’re right, branching and merging is a pretty advanced topic. I’d suggest doing your research before hopping into the deep end. Really, just doing basic development along the main trunk covers 95% of the scenarios you’ll ever find yourself in. For the other parts, curl up with O’Reilly and figure things out. :)

I like your suggestions, as well, but I’d like some clarification for #2. What’s going on there that ”svn mv file1 file2” wouldn’t handle?

posted at 06:32 pm on July 25, 2006 by Mike West

10 Re: More excellent feedback!

Mike: My experience with #2 is solely using Eclipse with the Subclipse Plugin. I had an external developer working on their own branch who deleted and then replaced 2 key css files. When the time came to update the branch from trunk, it took some time to figure out what they had done and resolve the issue.

posted at 08:43 pm on July 25, 2006 by Luke Bussey

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