I am researching development in VisualFiles.
How can I use version control on the files(scripts) I have changed?
My solution so far:
Setup:
Create a folder structure within the repository according to my applications.
Update process
I will modify a file in visual files
I will then manually have to update file in a repository
Commit the changes against a work item
Is there a better way of introducing version control for VisualFiles. Because to me this feels like not an ideal solution
Thats pretty much the only solution at the moment. The team I am in does something similar but only really for major versions, in minor changes we will feature-switch within the code and leave the old edits inline with dates and initials
The platform provider (LexisNexis) have determined changess to code editor functionality as "likely to implement". This may or may not include version control, that is not yet known, if it does it will be in released v4.1+. There are no other tools available to achieve your aim within the platform. Ask your account manager for access to the ideas portal and you can see when their dev team commit to enhancements such as this.
As source/version control is a long standing issue, any devs using the platform have always had to find workarounds as per your suggestion. The providers are highly unlikely to push any version control functionality with backwards compatability pre v4.
I made some changes to my project tonight and messed some stuff up. Is there a way I can go back to how the project was when I opened it? I added/deleted some files but I don't see a way to go back. My last time machine backup was from a few days ago also.
It won't help with the immediate problem, but you need to start using source code control.
This is exactly the sort of problem that source control solves. In Xcode 4 Apple make it particularly easy to start using source code control, as whenever you create a project it offers to create a Git repository for you.
Even for the smallest personal projects, source control is well worth the effort.
There is a possibility to roll back changes if you use XCode's snapshots feature. XCode 4 suggests making a project snapshot before refactoring, for example.
If you don't have the habit to commit or stash changes often (or happen not to use source control at all), snapshots are a nice tool to use before making any major changes that may break the project.
In your current situation though, you're out of luck. Sorry.
I work on a software project which has a suite of source code that undergoes periodic change. The code is typically promoted to a production environment, and development continues in a development environment. Emergency hotfixes in production need to be backported to development. A third environment for testing may also exist from time to time. Many developers work on this code at the same time, often needing to make changes to the same individual file.
In short, a classic use-case for version control software. Unfortunately, we have a stone age IT department, and we do all our development in a stock Windows XP environment with absolutely no possibility of using any other software without approval - which never happens. We are lucky to have Winzip.
So what's the best way of managing the above workflow without any real tools? At the moment we are just editing files on a Windows shared drive, making ad-hoc working copies into folders with names like "James's Copy of X", doing backups with Winzip, and calling across the room, "is anybody working on this file at the moment?"
Thanks,
James
Edit: Some clarifications:
The irony is that the system is hardly locked down at all - I could download, install and configure TortoiseHg in about 7 minutes. But I need to do this by the book.
I am also actively pursuing getting version control software through official channels, but ETA for that is 6-9 months if ever, so I'm just trying to do the best I can with what I have now.
Finally, trust me, you will be reading about this project on TheDailyWTF one day, so please help me out with what I can do now rather than what management should have done last week.
Get source control. Talk to management, refuse to work, do whatever you can to get it in.
Bring in a netbook, install a SVN server and use that. Run Git off USB drives.
Really - anything.
It is not just an industry standard now - it is irresponsible of you and your management to continue working like this.
After notifying management and explaining that this is an issue, if they do nothing, just let the inevitable happen. Something that shouldn't have been promoted to production will be (regression, bug, new feature, whatever). When they come to blame you, explain how source control can help ensure that such things do not happen again. Perhaps they will listen then.
Ok, two actual options occur to me here.
First. You have Winzip, and you appear to have web access since you're posting on Stack Overflow. Assuming you have the ability to upload files (which isn't a given, since you're still using a generic StackOverflow avatar) you could find - or build - an externally-hosted service that'll allow you to upload a ZIP file via a web browser, unzip it, and then commit the unzipped contents to a Git or Subversion repository. Stick a secure web front end on it (Apache + mod-dav-svn) and you'll have the ability to browse, review and commit changes to individual files. You won't get the benefits of local SVN/GIT capabilities like merging, but you'll have centralized project history. There could even be a quite lucrative business model in this - selling web-based SCM to developers who are stuck on IE6 and WinXP and can't install anything.
Second: You find a junior/admin in your IT team who's just as frustrated as you are at the draconian restrictions being enforced, persuade them that you know what you're doing, and get them to 'accidentally' set up a local administrator account on your workstation. WinXP is sufficiently insecure out of the box that this shouldn't be too hard to make this look like an accident.
Copy and paste the files into a seperate folder and call that folder vers_x, or get the windows backup utility to save them each day, or another backup utility to do the same? though the first post is correct, strike till vers cont is implemented.
Get git. git init on the current source "repository". Install git on everyone's pc's.
Also, the strike idea is definitely not so bad in this case.
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.