Version control

corblimey · 22-07-2009 11:22am #1

I need to get back into version control as soon as possible, but I've never been happy with any of the solutions I've used in the past. I was okay with TortoiseSVN on Windows, but I've been an Ubuntu boy now for about 2 years. I was using SVN packaged with Eclipse for a while but I hate the way it leaves .svn folders all over the place. I kept forgetting to do a 'release' version of the software with no .svn and then ftp'ing that version.

I'm just looking for something that will allow me to rollback and branch without investing a massive amount of time and effort.

Sparks · 22-07-2009 2:12pm

Mercurial. (You could use git too, but Mercurial is easier to pick up and use, I find).

corblimey · 22-07-2009 2:43pm

Thanks, Sparks, I took a look at git and it looks pretty good, pretty easy, but I'll give Mecurial a look first, see if it's useful

Sparks · 22-07-2009 2:49pm

Both do approximately the same thing, and approximately equally well, but if you've some specific requirements, you'll find one suits more than another. If you're managing a large project with lots of contributors, for example, git is custom-written by Torvalds to do that job. It's very fast at handling branches and patches from multiple sources. However, it's not as user-friendly (I find) as mercurial; and not everyone's managing the linux kernel with thousands of submissions of code a week from thousands of sources.
Try both, see which fits.

ianhobo · 22-07-2009 2:54pm

Have your tried CVS?

I use SVN myself, and yes the .svn folders can be particularly annoying :-) There are some good free scripts though for recursively removing them if not needed

Sparks · 22-07-2009 2:57pm

CVS? Bleh. Pain to go from single-user to collaborative model, and even less fun to change filenames...

croo · 22-07-2009 6:16pm

Bazaar is worth taking a look. http://bazaar-vcs.org/
Very flexible with lots of ways to use it. I found it a little slow, but I was importing a very large project to test. Worth a look I think.

Civilian_Target · 22-07-2009 8:35pm

Mercurial ++
Croo: How large?
I had to import a huge project into SVN today, it literally could not cope...

DJB · 22-07-2009 9:09pm

In SVN, you can do an export that gets rid of all the .svn folders, afaik. I think mac's hides the .svn folder by default so never notice. Have played with git as well, very nice.

croo · 23-07-2009 12:11pm

Civilian_Target wrote: »

Mercurial ++
Croo: How large?
I had to import a huge project into SVN today, it literally could not cope...

According to Ohloh 3,212,836 lines. I was uploading it to "launchpad" (it's their default repos which is why I looked at bazaar in the first place) and I have crappy 3g connection, but I had thought it had crashed at first. It was only when I started debugging it I realized it was working just slowly!

But it seems very flexible in its configuration options, so if the project wasn't very big I would definitely try it and see.

I've not had any issues with SVN with this (3m lines) project!? Either local or remote.

Version control

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