Source control system for single developer

Question

What\'s the recommended source control system for a very small team (one developer)?

Price does not matter. Customer would pay :-)
I\'m working on Vista32 with V

Answer 1

There are two possible solutions for your problem: centralized VCS or Distributed VCS (DVCS).

Centralized VCS like Subversion would satisfy you feature for committing and browsing the log. It also enables you to safely store your repository to another computer which should be one of your major goals as hard drive failure is always a possibility. However, using Subversion the history still resides only at the central location making it vulnerable and you stated that you do not want to have another server.

Distributed Version Control Systems (DVCS) such as Mercurial and Git enable you to do more complex operations on your repository. With both of those tools the whole repository resides with the same computer making it bit easier to make backups and using the repository with another computer e.g. laptop. While Mercurial might seem complex at first the operations you would use with subversion are pretty much the same with Mercurial. Therefore there is no extra overhead to get started if you already know Subversion and you can easily use more advanced features of Mercurial later.

You should be able to find online repository service for your Mercurial repository enabling you to make easy backups and do collaboration some day if you have the need for it.

My recommendation is Mercurial with TortoiseHg.

Answer 2

Bazaar is a good version control system. I like to use it for my linux configs because you don't need to create a separate repo.

Answer 3

I've been working with Bazaar now for a few weeks and really like it. I'm a linux developer so don't really know much about Tortois but if you like it you should know that there is a Tortoisbzr

Answer 4

I would also recommend Mercurial. It's command set is much like the one found in Subversion, so the learning curve is not that steep. As mentioned earlier, it's designed to run locally, but it's also easy to share/merge changes across computers, or even just push it to a remote server for backups.

It offers excellent tools, like TortoiseHG, and it has good plugins for NetBeans and Eclipse. It also runs natively on Win32, as it's written in Python.

If you don't want to set up a server yourself (for backups, e.g.), there are free hosting providers available; there's a comprehensive list on The Mercurial Wiki.

Answer 5

Sourcegear's Vault is a great option, it runs on SqlServer and it has been around for many years. I would not use any version of VSS (Visual Source Safe).

Answer 6

I use Mercurial. It runs a treat running stand alone on my Vista development system with no other dependencies required. I use the command line but there's also TortoiseHG to integrate with Explorer.

Two comments:

1. There are other tools which probably integrate with VS better. I think Subversion has nice VS plug ins.
2. The benefit of a separate server is that it's a nice backup of all your work in case your HDD dies on you etc. so discount having one.

Edit: @Slartibartfast - if you just want to run source code control on a single machine a Distributed Source Code Control tool like git or Mercurial is ideal since they're designed to run complete repositories on a machine without the overhead of a server. The fact that you never connect your repository to anyone else's to push and pull changes doesn't mean that tool won't be right.