CODEWITHSUNDEEP
version-control
gnosis
gnosis

Reputation: 929

Simplest source control ever - what do you use?

I am working on a solo project, writing all code myself so no collaboration is required,

However, I do need the following features:

  1. Check in a current version, with comments
  2. Assign a label to a version
  3. Retrieve a version using label/tag
  4. NOT HOSTED (meaning I hold the repository on my local machine)
  5. free/open source
  6. With a nice GUI, not command line?

I think SVN is a good one, but it seems a bit overkill for me. Anyone ever came across anything like that?

Upvotes: 6

Views: 1357

Answers (13)

nick3216
nick3216

Reputation: 161

Setting up a repository is a one-off action at the start of your project. It doesn't really matter whether this takes 5 minutes or 20. This time will be swamped by the time you'll spend using the GUI client to do the check-in, check-out, add labels.

Try SVN with the TortoiseSVN client.

Upvotes: 0

Andrew Rollings
Andrew Rollings

Reputation: 14561

If you have sql server (in any way, shape or form) on your local machine, then I can recommend sourcevault... It's free for single users, and emulates the sourcesafe interface (which a lot of people are familiar with) very well...

Comes with a nice toolset too.

http://sourcegear.com/

EDIT: Completely irrelevant, but interesting nonetheless... I bloody hate the SourceGear buggers! ;) Before SourceVault came out I was working on a drop-in replacement to SourceSafe... much like their product... (That's where the "hiive" name of my website/company came from... But the buggers beat me to it... C'est la vie!

Anyway, despite them beating me to the punch, SourceGear Vault is actually an awesome piece of software, and their new Fortress (that integrates bug-tracking and testing too) looks pretty good as well.

Upvotes: 0

bob
bob

Reputation: 6485

You can use Subversion without the hassle of a server installation.

Just download TortoiseSVN and create a local repository in a folder that you prefer. Use the same client to do updates, commits...

see my previous post for the links and related answers.

Upvotes: 1

Brian
Brian

Reputation: 119221

As others have mentioned, going with a distributed VCS (eg. mercurial, git, or bazaar) is the way to go for a dead simple setup. No matter how easy it is to setup a server, you can't beat not having to set one up at all.

I usually use mercurial, so that's what I'll describe, but the various DVCSs are all pretty easy to get going with. Its fairly simple to use from the commandline, but since you're looking for a gui interface, the obvious candidate is TortoiseHg. This operates pretty similarly to TortoiseSVN - it integrates with explorer and provides you with various menu entries.

Upvotes: 0

Scott Wisniewski
Scott Wisniewski

Reputation: 25041

This is a shameless plug, but I couldn't resist.

I'm working on a tool that might be useful for you.

I haven't figured out the name yet, so I'm using a code name of "Code Agent".

It's designed mainly as a compliment to a source control setup, but if you are just a single developer on one machine, it might be a useful replacement for you.

It's a service that runs on your development machine. You point it at the folders that contain your source code, and then it will automatically create a backup every time you change a file.

It's designed to fill in a big gap left by source control systems:

They only protect your files when you explictly check them in.

Source control is mainly about managing the output of a team (several developers) over several releases of a project. As a result, it's generally not a good idea to check-in broken code into source control. Most of the time, developers only checkin code when it's "mostly working".

In the best of enviornments, with the best team of developers, this usually means you are probably only averaging (over the whole project) one checkin per day.

It can probably go as low as once every several days or several weeks in the worst cases.

Even in the best case, though, a lot of stuff can happen in day. I know that if I'm on a roll, for example, I can introduce quite a large number of bugs in the course of day. Over a week or two, I can really messs stuff up.

Having history of code changes at a more granular level then once a day or once a week, can therefore be really helpful.

It's possible to do this using "private" source control branches, but that requires you to:

  1. Setup the private branch
  2. Spend time managing the branch by taking regular integrations to / from the main branch
  3. Remember to checkin your changes at regular intervals into the private branch.

The last one is probably the killer. It’s an easy thing to forget.

And of course as soon as you setup a private branch, someone else is going to want to access the code in it for one reason or another, which is then going to end up preventing you from checking in as regularly as you want, which ends defeating the whole purpose of the private branch in the first place.

"Code Agent" fixes all of this.

You can setup it up once, and forget it about it.

You then have local source code history, at whatever granularity you need, whenever you need it. All automatically, and without having to checkin in “bad code” into your team’s source control repository.

For developers on teams, my tool is not a replacement for source control, but instead is designed as a complement to it. On a team you still need to explicitly manage checkins to a shared source code tree.

In your case, because you are not on a team, however, it might be perfect for you to use as a replacement for source control. You can add labels, or “snapshots” that correspond to specific points in time (like “fixed bug 1234”, “finished feature x”, etc).

It's not, however, free or open source.. It's a tool I'm going to be charging money for.

However, it should definitely be affordable for an individual developer to purchase (I haven't finalized the price yet).

I am going to be looking for Beta-testers sometime in early to mid January. If you are interested, let me know, and I would be happy to set you up with a private beta.

Upvotes: -3

sparky
sparky

Reputation:

git, mercurial, bzr, svn... the list goes on and on and on.

Really, just pick one and you'll be good to go. I do all my source control from the command line, but many/most of these have decent guis. Good luck.

Upvotes: 2

George Stocker
George Stocker

Reputation: 57877

How about Subversion on a [USB] Stick? It's what I use when I need to have source control, but don't want to worry about multi-users. You can also use TortoiseSVN to access the repository.

Upvotes: 1

orip
orip

Reputation: 75427

I use Subversion a lot, and it isn't difficult to set up for personal use - but other options are so much simpler!

For example, try Bazaar, Mercurial, or Git. With any one of these it's trivial to set up a local repository.

Upvotes: 3

Gerrit
Gerrit

Reputation: 1599

Check out Bazaar. It's a versioning system, for human beings! It receives support from the Ubuntu people, who make Linux for Human Beings.

Upvotes: 6

wasker
wasker

Reputation: 1999

Why subversion is an overkill? One minute to install server and TortoiseSVN, zero configuration.

If you want to control your source code, do it right way from the very beginning, do not reinvent the wheel.

Upvotes: 9

genehack
genehack

Reputation: 140728

Git meets all your listed requirements.

Upvotes: 14

Andrew Kennan
Andrew Kennan

Reputation: 14157

I don't think svn is overkill for what you are doing. It's pretty trivial to set up a local repository.

Upvotes: 16

Bill Michell
Bill Michell

Reputation: 8360

Perforce is free for up to 2 users. After that, you pay - but if you know you'll never need more, it is a very capable product with an excellent GUI and IDE integration.

Upvotes: 1

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