I am trying to figure out how to use Git in a group (php programming) project. We need to be able to commit to the same project individually. I have read different things about git and realized that there are quite a lot of ways for achieving this.
My question is: What should I download and how do I set it up the best way? And how can this be used through eclipse?
Also, should the "GIT" folder/project be located online? If so, where should this be uploaded to?
(I have read that the git plugin for eclipse isn't the best solution at all)
The best solution is to read the EGit User Guide.
No need to read the whole thing, just come back to it whenever you're stuck in using it.
I'm currently using Bitbucket for my Mercurial repositories and it's working great. I would however like to be able to organize my repositories in folders, as having them all in one long list is a bit disorganized for my liking.
To be clear I'd like to be able to access my repositories kind of like this:
hg clone https://username#bitbucket.org/username/foldername/reponame
While (AFAIK) it is currently only possible to use a single reponame, no foldername.
Is there any Mercurial hosting provider that does this, or is there some other method that might help me organize my stuff?
I'm aware of subrepos and I might look into that, but it seems like a hackish solution to my problem (also one of the clusters I am working on uses an ancient Mercurial version from way before subrepos were added). Another possibility would be to have multiple user accounts for Bitbucket, but again that doesn't really scale well (I don't want to wind up with 10 accounts).
You will have to use separate repositories.
Kiln has a nice interface that supports multiple repositories.
Organize Your Code
Start simply by just creating the repositories you need for your
code. Kiln introduces branch repositories, repository groups, and
projects to help keep things organized as you develop your own
workflow.
...
Repository Groups and Projects are there to help keep related code
grouped together. Whether your software project is large or small, it
can be really helpful to separate different parts of the code into
different repositories. What used to be accomplished with complicated
naming schemes is now accomplished with simple labels and
drag-and-drop organization.
Kiln (kilnhg.com) has a concept of projects and groups for organizing repositories along with several other really cool features.
It is a commercial product, however. (Your question didn't mention whether or not that was a problem for you.)
The only way you can obtain this using Bitbucket is to create a single repository named "foldername" and put the sub-repository inside this 'root repository'. This however is not the best practice according to the mercurial philosophy. Also, you will have a single bitbucket panel as per a single repository.
You can then use the mercurial feature Suprepositories to manage the whole collection:
https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/Subrepository
Read about the kind of layout you are looking for here:
https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/UnderstandingMercurial
(point 6, at the end of the page)
Of course you can setup your personal mercural server to do this, but is a little bit tricky and I discourage it. If you wanto to try, you can start from here:
http://ekkescorner.wordpress.com/blog-series/git-mercurial/step-by-step-install-mercurial-server-on-ubuntu/
We have a fairly large project, and I've decided that Google Code is not quite living up to expectations. Github looks like a much more suitable platform -- but I feel like there's no escape for us. Is it a case of migrating stuff over manually? We're using svn currently, so I understand that we'll need to move to git somehow - is this going to be possible considering that I don't have admin access to our repository? Also, I know this is subjective and I don't want to start a holy war, but please also comment on your feelings about Google Code vs Github. Should we also be considering SourceForge?
I've used all, and now I am using github and I am completely satisfied. Sourceforge had annoying ads and was slow, google code didn't have the features I wanted/needed.
As for moving to github, they have a guide here, the process should be quite simple:
http://help.github.com/svn-importing/
We're using svn currently, so I understand that we'll need to move to git somehow - is this going to be possible considering that I don't have admin access to our repository?
Nope, you can use git svn to convert a repo, even if you don't have admin access. Here's a good tutorial (from one of the GitHub guys, no doubt) that explains how to convert an SVN repo to Git (including how to migrate tags and branches properly, which git-svn doesn't do very well).
but please also comment on your feelings about Google Code vs Github.
I've never used Google Code for personal projects. I know from a visitor's standpoint, I like the interface and tools used by GitHub a lot better.
Should we also be considering SourceForge?
Ugh... I personally think SourceForge is probably the worst of the free source code hosting facilities nowadays.
I think before you go through all the work to migrate to github (which is great yes) I would consider what your problem actually is. If it is just that you are using svn and that is not a distributed version control system you could just migrate your google code repository to be HG (Mercurial) based and you would get all the benefits of a distributed version control system but could otherwise stay at google code (which has great features that github does not have as well..)
Google announced today that they're closing Google Code. They added a migration tool to export projects to GitHub, it just takes one click.
I have an app in the iPhone app store and have released several minor updates to it. I want to begin work on some major feature additions and reorganization, but don't want to lose the source code of my most recent version in case everything goes horribly wrong.
Should I start a new Xcode project from scratch and copy my existing source in? If I do this will I be able to submit the build from this new project as an update or will Apple complain that the build comes from a different Xcode project?
I've seen (but not used) Xcode's "Snapshots" and "Source Control" features - are these what I'm looking for?
Any help or direction greatly appreciated.
I would suggest getting your project into some kind of Source Control. The popular ones these days are Subversion (Xcode has built-in support for it, but the support is pretty crappy), git, and Mercurial, all of which run great on the Mac.
You would add your project to a git/svn/hg/etc repository, and then "tag" the repository with something meaningful ("Shipping Version 1.3" or something) (alternatively you could just branch your project at its current state and give that a meaningful name). Then you can do your developments, add and commit the changes to your repository. If you need to revert back to your old shipping version, that's quite simple because you tagged it before you started work (think of a tag like a snapshot).
The other option is to start a fresh Xcode project and copy things over. I have personally done this and shipped just fine to the App Store (just make sure things like your app's bundle id "com.whatever.app" matches with the original one, and make sure you codesign properly) and you're good to go.
Having said that, unless you have a really great reason to start with a fresh project, you're probably better off using source control management with one of the aforementioned tools (git is my preference).
You are using some form of source control right? If not, stop what you are doing and make sure to set up an svn repository. Svn is bundled with your mac and integrates with Xcode.
You also may want to start thinking about doing backups...
I highly recommend you check out Git. There is great Git support built into XCode 4, and you can use Git just fine with XCode 3 as well.
One great thing about Git is that you do not need a server to take advantage of the source code management features. It is a lot easier for a solo developer to work with than SVN once you get your head wrapped around it.
I also highly recommend GitX - a free graphical UI for Git that is absolutely amazing.
One other recommendation it GitBox - a simple tool that allows using a Dropbox as a Git master repository. This is great for sharing code between multiple machines without needing to have or pay for Git hosting at GitHub or elsewhere.
You can either do what the people said before, and use svn git or the like, OR if you don't want to mess around with any of that you can simply create your own version control by copying and pasting the folder and name it "project name x.x" and modify the version without the version number on it
snapshots are the first step. when you are comfortable with them you can hook up to an SVN server for your offsite backup
just make a snapshot after your distribution build and label with the version number
The quickest, easiest, short-term solution is to select the Xcode project folder, and duplicate it. This will create a duplicate of everything in the project. Apple won't care that it comes from a duplicate project.
For the long term, look into setting up an SVN. This will help you save your previous versions every time you make changes.
Since you are new to source control management so might I suggest using Subversion.
Subversion has less features than Git, but you don't have the confusion between pushing and committing (locally vs remotely) and you will find there is more software that supports Subversion than Git or Mercurial.
If you need a quick backup, you can always zip the current working folder for your Xcode project, then name it something like:
MyApplication-Version-1.00.zip
I've recently taken on a project with no version control. I don't have any experience with version control myself. I feel it is the only way to go with this project (and probably any future projects now I think of it - I always trust myself too much..)
My question is - where do I begin with implementing version control on a project already in production? Bearing in mind I haven't used version control before so really it's two separate questions:
Starting out with version control
Implementing it on an already live
project
For background, the project is a php/mysql driven website using bits of javascript, I'm working on a (Windows) XAMPP server and I'm very keen to learn this new world of version control!
Congratulations, you are headed in the right direction!
You'll first need to choose a version control system. My current favorite is Git. Unfortunately, I don't think that Git is an easy introduction to version control. I have also used Subversion and Perforce.
Subversion (http://subversion.tigris.org/) works on many platforms, is used in a lot of projects, and has some nice GUI tools available (such as TortoiseSVN on Windows). Command-line tools are also available. It's also free. You can run it in "local filesystem" mode, meaning that you don't need to set up a separate server. It's come a long way from it's "better than CVS" roots.
Perforce (http://www.perforce.com/) is pretty nice. Its Windows implementation seems the best (last I checked, their cross-platform GUI was pretty lousy). You primarily use a GUI to interact with it, though again there are command-line tools. It's commercial software, but open source projects can get free licenses by contacting the company. The biggest drag is that you will need to set up a server. To get started, you could run the server on the same box that you develop on, but that's probably a bad idea in the long run. I found Perforce to be very good for 2-8 person teams; I don't know how well it would work with more.
The big advantage to Git (http://git-scm.com/) is that it requires virtually no set-up. Once installed, you can execute git init in any directory to create a new git repository. The revision history is kept inside the project's directory. You can start out with just local versioning, and you can scale up from there. If Git seems scary, you could also check out Mercurial (https://www.mercurial-scm.org/). I haven't used it, but I understand that it shares some of the same underlying principles as Git.
Avoid CVS. It's on its way out, and no new project should be using it unless they need to do so.
Adding source control to an existing project is easy. The hard part would be making sure that everybody is willing to use source control. If you're working alone, then it's just personal discipline. If you're part of a team, though, and some people have reservations, you will have problems. Try to get everybody on board, and be available to try to answer their questions. If people don't know how to use a tool, they simply won't use it.
Start here: http://svnbook.red-bean.com/
I've found SVN to be the easiest version control system to use, especially for beginners. It's pretty simple to start, the only real decision you have to make is where to host your stuff. There are a couple free svn servers available, but if you're really serious about your work you should host your own.
The first thing to do is to pick a version control paradigm (centralized versus distributed). To answer that, you'll need to take a look at your team and how you intend to handle check-in, check-out, merging, and branching. Once you pick a paradigm, you can choose a version control system. The mainstream systems are Subversion for centralized version control and Git and Mercurial for distributed version control.
If the project is live and working, then that should be your initial check-in to whatever version control you are using. You need a reliable baseline that you can revert to and have 0 work to deploy something that works. If your project is not functional...well, good luck. You might want to check in to start using version control and then decide how you want to proceed (either get the project to a stable and functioning state and then restart your repository or have your initial check-in be a broken system).
If the rest of the team doesn't see the benefit with version control, I would recommend installing your own system on your machine and, at the very least, use it for your own work.
Be prepared for some resistance from management and/or your co-workers. Management may not want to invest the resources for a repository machine -- these things need to be installed, maintained, backed-up, etc. Or they may object to you spending time on an "extra" like a RCS.
Your co-workers, especially if they're unfamiliar with any RCS, are likely to resist using it, or complain that it's too hard to use. There's a learning curve to any new tool, and source control systems are no exception. It's worth the time to learn, though.
My advice is to pick one -- any one that strikes your fancy -- and start using it. Don't worry about getting it 100% perfect the 1st time, it probably won't be any worse than what you have now, which is one misplaced keystroke away from oblivion.
Play with it. Check files out into a separate workspace and hack things up, knowing that it doesn't matter; you can always revert it. Learn how to use your new tool with some GUI frontends (I'm fond of 'svn diff --diff-cmd=kdiff3', myself). Get to the point where you know how to check in & out, tags things, branch, and merge. Then show your co-workers.
Personally, I'm fond of svn, but I didn't choose it; it chose me.
Step 1: Download Mercurial.
Step 2: In your favorite command line, go to the root of your source directory and type hg init.
Step 3: Do a make clean or equivalent (ie. all you want is source, no generated files).
Step 4: Type hg addremove.
Step 5: Type hg commit.
From this point on you can:
Examine the changes between your most recent commit and now: hg diff or hg status.
Make checkpoints in your code: hg commit.
Return to previous checkpoints: hg update -C -r 0
Congratulations, you are now using version control: It's really not that hard, and it's very, very useful (if for no other reason than you can look at the changes you've made to see if they make sense).
At some point you'll probably want to learn about branching (if only so that you have a backup copy of your repository on another machine) at which point you can turn to the documentation or the book.
I don't know if there is something similar for php etc, but an interesting resource here is "Brownfield Application Development in .NET". In many ways, this only uses .NET for the examples; most of the book is really about tackling policies exactly like you mention:
how to introduce source control
how to introduce unit testing
how to introduce continuous integration
etc
and all the concerns/consideration that go with them.
Partly relating to the code; but also relating to the "human" factor; colleagues, managers, etc. I highly recommend it; but you might decide the .NET background is inappropriate for you (it is a good fit for me ;-p).
You can look here: git-for-beginners-the-definitive-practical-guide
This one is a distributed version control system that currently has a good windows support with Git on Windows and a shell extension with TortoiseGit
An addition to other answers:
If the project you want to put under version control have had some releases, and if those versions are available for example as tarfiles (e.g. project-0.1.tar.gz, project-0.2.tar.gz, project-0.3.tar.gz, ...) you might want to consider importing those versions into your chosen version control system. Git for example has import-tars.perl and import-zips.py in contrib/fast-import/ directory, and writing support for other files in other programming languages for git fast-import should be easy.
Sidenote: my preferred version control system is Git.
See also: Good link or book for basics and theory of version control question.
I learned the concepts from the pragmatic series:
example for subversion, they also have books on GIT as well.
I only have experience with SourceSafe and SVN.
SourceSafe seems to have issues with corrupting it's own database, on a team of 5 we were repairing the db probably once a month. It's easy, but still something you shouldn't have to deal with. It's difficult to label code too and use that label for anything practical.
SVN is nice, it's simple to install on Linux or Windows. Most IDEs have a plugin for it, and if you're using Windows there is an Explorer extension (TortoiseSVN) that allows you to do all your operations right from Windows Explorer. There's a lot of SVN tools out there for every OS, it's very well supported. SVN also integrates with TRAC (a bug tracking system), and Bugzilla so you can tie your work tickets to code.
I will say that [HOW you use version control is probably just as, if not more important than which package you use][2]. Using it simply as a library is a very rudimentary application of it, but for a 1-2 man team making a website or an app where you won't be maintaining builds and versions, you'll be ok.
When it comes to version control, anything is better than nothing.
Wow, everyone is just boosting his favorite version control utility.
OK, to answer your question, how do you put a project under version control?
It's not that hard, once you pick a version control utility (be it, git, svn, hg, bzr .. whatever) there's usually a command or two to initialize a repository then add all the relevant files to it.
For instance, in git it might be something like:
$git init
$git add --all
$git commit -m"First commit"
Now, about choosing a version control utility, that's a tough question and highly depends on what you want. You might want to have a look at this question:
Popularity of Git/Mercurial/Bazaar vs. which to recommend
The only tools you should consider choosing among are:
git
svn (Subversion)
hg (Merculiar)
bzr (Bazaar)
mtn (Monotone)
Everything else is either old or commercial.
svn follows a server-client model; there's a central repository. If you're a one-man team then the only thing this means to you is that you have to setup a server and make sure it starts with the computer. Though I heard that you can do away with the server. A bit of googling turns up this guide for using svn without a server
All other tools follow a distributed model, again, if you're a one-man team, the only thing this means to you is that there's no server to setup.
The advantage of svn is that it's been there for a while and has many gui front-ends and better IDE integration.
I can't compare git to hg (merculiar) since I haven't used the latter, but git has a unique storage model compared to svn and hg.
bzr is said to be easier to use, but slower (it's written in python).
I'm personally satisfied with git, but you should do your own research; or maybe just choose one and stick with it. As far as I can tell, they're all mature and stable.