If you already use some kind of online versioning software this article is not for you. though if you’re not, this might prove useful.
I’ve been using Subversion since 2007 on a couple of personal projects, mainly because I used to hop from one laptop to the other and found the dilemma of updating and syncing files manually and potentially overwriting things in the process to be quite tedious and annoying. Not to mention my desire to avoid the distress of putting everything on a disk and somehow mangling it.
I wanted a solution and Subversion thankfully, proved to be it. It took all the guesswork and pain out of managing project files. I basically set up Subversion in five minutes on my dreamhost account (using their one click installer).Then I install Tortoise SVN on any windows based machine I want and hey presto, I’m all set up to have a copy of my work stored online efficiently and be able to sync the work and update this master copy with revisions of any new work directly from windows explorer. You can obviously use mac to do this as well, but I’ve yet to find a decent free to use client side app for it.
I dont use all the fancy features of subversion, I mainly work with binary files, and I only use Checkout once, then Commit, and Update, this has served me quite well.
A few days ago we decided to roll it out in the Running in the Halls office and use it for syncing and storing all our client files. above is a screenshot of what it does to a folder that is under version control those green ticks are good. It basically means you haven’t made any changes to the folders or there are no files in the there than need committing.
This has so far been a great success and it has become a repository for us. Every time I do new bit of work which I want to be versioned I send a copy to the server using commit.
What I update is then available whenever that folder is updated anywhere. Above is a screenshot of what happens when you press update. Because we tell each other what we’re working on in the office, there haven’t been any issues really.
But in the past I have worked on things and updated them when another copy existed that was newer. I was alerted to the conflict, but this has only happened twice so I know how to avoid it.
The best bit of all of this is:
- Theres a backup of everything on several machines and somewhere remote
- you can roll back to any previous revision if need be
- You can access your repository from anywhere even without clientsoftware installed, using any web browser.
This has been so valuable in the past when I’ve wanted to show someone a PNG of a mockup or idea at an impromptu meeting, at a party or wherever I have my phone on me. I can access the repository, download an individual file via the web interface and I’m done!
Downsides:
It wont solve any of your folder and file naming problems. A good directory structure and good file naming conventions are useful.
I’ve yet to find a decent OSX client.
SVN is a complicated bit of kit with a lot of functionality which I don’t use, Im not entirely sure what it would do if it totally malfunctioned on me, or my fingers had a twitch and I decided to tinker with its advanced settings. So far its good, I’ve used it for a few years and I hope we can carry on enjoying it in the office.
I’m not sure how portable or easy to configure it is should I decide to switch hosts.
Although I hear its quite good at storing binaries, I’m certainly not convinced thats what it was made for. But so far so good.
I use springloops with Aptana, though I’m sure you could hook it up to DreamWeaver or your other coding app.
Takes away alot of the hassles of SVN — and creates entirely new ones!