Using Source Control [closed]

Answer 1

check out Git and think about hosting your projects on https://github.com/ - also, check out linus talk on git: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8

Answer 2

Ok first there are many source control products other than the two you have mentioned but I would get used to SVN first.

TFS is expensive and tied into the Microsoft stack.

I'd start with reading this:

http://svnbook.red-bean.com/

Specifically the chapter on fundamental concepts

Yes this book is tied in to svn but it covers the basics too.

When you have read that download TortoiseSVN. This is an svn client that hooks into your windows shell. Only when you are comfortable with using this would I then move on to an integrated svn client. (I actually don't use one) AknhSVN is free.

Answer 3

Please go ahead and open up wikipedia, you have a bit of reading to do:

1. Revision control
2. Subversion

With that reading done, you should have a better understand of what source control is. As a programmer, I'm pretty sure you'll find it makes sense to "save" what you're working on, making changes incrementally and being able to go back to those changes.

In a nutshell, revision control is the ability to go back in time, so that you can read code you have written at that moment.

Answer 4

I found this article to be very clear. (It recommends SVN).

Answer 5

The source control system is separate from your IDE. You can use it from the command line, or from a graphical client as well as from your IDE.

What you should know about a source control system is this:

• you save your increment changes to the SCM (source code management), and each save receives an unique id/revision
• you can retrieve any revision on any time, therefore changes are never lost
• this gives you the liberty to delete unused code, debug info, or to refactor existing functionalities
• and most importantly, it gives these functionalities to all members of a team, so that the team can work at the same time on the same code base, from their own development machines

You could start with svn, as it's very popular (especially for open source projects) with widespread support. You can gen the command line client from here:

http://subversion.tigris.org/

This is a nice graphical interface (windows):

http://tortoisesvn.net/

This is a free book to help you start with svn:

http://svnbook.red-bean.com/

If you need to setup a server on your development machine, this tutorial should help:

http://blogs.vertigosoftware.com/teamsystem/archive/2006/01/16/Setting_up_a_Subversion_Server_under_Windows.aspx

Answer 6

Of the source control systems I've used Subversion with Tortoise is my preferred choice (I've used VSS, Subversion (SVN) and TFS).

Subversion has some excellent documentation on how it works and also on the general concepts of version control so that you actually understand what you are doind and why.

If you want to set up Subversion on a Windows stack then by far the easiest way is with VisualSVN which is free. The client side plug in to Visual Studio, however, is not free. But there are many free alternatives such as Tortoise.