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I'm a college CS freshman who wishes to learn a version control system well. Currently I'm looking at Subversion, Perforce, and Surround SCM.
I would be integrating the system with Eclipse, on a Linux platform. The code involved would mainly be C++, Java, and LaTeX (which I'll be using Eclipse as well).
Most probably I'll be the only user, but the advantage of SVN is that it is open source, while the other two are proprietary. I've heard a lot of good testimonial on TortiseSVN, but since I'm using Linux, I'll be missing out on that.
EDIT: Thanks for all the answers. Of course, I am open to any other version control systems as well. I will be checking out Git and Mercurial.
If you're learning version control systems, you would definitely do well to consider one of the newer "distributed" version control systems such as Git or Mercurial. By limiting your scope to the previous generation of tools as you mentioned, you will be missing out on what (some) people are really using today.
For learning a system, I probably wouldn't recommend choosing a commercial offering. You will get far better support and documentation, for free, with an open source solution.
If those are your only options, definitely SVN. That's the one (from that list) that real people use in the wild.
Honestly, though, learn a DVCS. Git, Mercurial, darcs, one of them.
If you're going to be the only one on a project, definitely you should check out SVN. Get Subclipse, an Eclipse plugin for Subversion, and get used to that. Then, move on to other version control systems once you feel comfortable.
I'd like to second (or third) those that suggested Git or Mercurial (or Bazaar). Distributed version control systems aren't just good for projects with multiple contributors; I use Git for any and all projects I start, even if they're just throw-aways. Basically, your development folder is your repository - It's portable, and it's easy to add more contributors and move to a more traditional centralized workflow later on.
I recommend Git especially because it has a bit of a steep learning curve, but it has taught me so much about project management, revision control, how to merge and patch files, how to read 'diff' output, etc. It really lets you get down to the fine grained details of version control.
You might find Perforce's whitepapers worth reading, for example High-level Best Practices
in Software Configuration Management.
SVN is very easy to learn. For those people who do use Windows, the GUI version is great.
Even if you are running Linux, I would still suggest learning it because it is widely used in places such as Google Code, Python, Wordpress, etc...
Bazaar is absolutely awesome for single-person, serverless development. It takes an entire five minutes to set up, and it's working immediately. It has the power of large VCS's ... but it's easy enough to use on your own.
I've heard Git and Mercurial are right along the same lines ... but I've a=only used Bzr.
I'd recommend Subversion, simply because of its pervasiveness in open source projects. There's definitely a lot of opportunity to put your Subversion knowledge to use in open source projects, and if you do, you'll learn a lot about coding, working as a team, and about using a VCS properly in a team (which is half of learning to use a VCS, and is the hard part because you can't learn it very well on your own). Fewer open source projects use proprietary VCSs, which means you'll get less of an opportunity to use them in the real world unless you're working specifically with friends or as a job. I haven't used the other two you mentioned, but I have no complaints about Subversion, it's quite straight-forward to use.
I'd also like to recommend a distributed VCS, such as git. With a distributed VCS, since every participant in a project has a complete copy of the source repository, and has complete control over their own copy, it means that you're given greater flexibility to use the VCS capabilities. You'll find that you have the freedom to commit as often as you want, and create new branches whenever you want, which is great when you're making changes to code and you want the ability to go back to an old version if necessary. A distributed VCS lets you use the VCS as a tool to help your coding, rather than simply as a way of storing and sharing your code with others. It's also very easy to set up a new repository in a distributed VCS. With git you just run git init and it'll set up version control in the current directory. How easy is that?
I am looking for a good source control solution. Here are the requirements:
Must have a GUI or have an available GUI plug-in.
Must be free.
Must work with HTTP.
What source control would you choose?
BACKGROUND
Our .Net development team is part of a large parent company. We're in the process of acquiring VS Team System, however the bureaucracy of a large company moves slowly and it could be months before we have a Team System server up and running. In the meantime, we have a large project that will be outsourced to a vendor in India. In the past, our team's process has been something like this: 1)specify the requirements, 2)let the Indian team create the solution, and 3) receive the solution back from the vendor a month later.
We're looking for a more disciplined approach and Team System is our long term solution, however I'd like to use something right now instead of nothing.
Here are some of my thoughts:
Source Safe is a no-go, because of stability issues.
Ease of use is more important than advanced features, like branching and I'd really, really want it to use a GUI versus command lines.
HTTP access is a must, because the development team will be remote.
Additional Information as a follow up to feedback so far
We need a free solution, not because we can't afford it, but because the company's corporate purchasing policies will delay getting it. Free enables us to install at any time. I suppose that if it were cheap enough, I could pay out of my own pocket, but it would have to be pretty cheap.
Final
Sadly, we did not end up using any of the recommendations. We did finally obtain a TFS license, however we're not expected to have clearance to use the server until next year. In the interim, the offshore team is uploaded zip files onto an ftp server. Ugggghh! Why is it so hard to convince large companies that it's ok to use non-standard solutions (such as GIT) rather than wait months (or years) as they dither on trying to decide whether or not a purchase (in this case TFS) is worth it.
I recommend Subversion and TortoiseSVN. Even the documentation for Subversion is free.
Edited to add:
I also strongly recommend VisualSVN Server to setup your SVN repository. The setup was a snap and its been so trouble free I had to go look to see what it was called because I haven't had to touch it once since the initial set-up.
Think about a distributed system: darcs, git, or mercurial. They all have their adherents, but operationally they're much similar. darcs can take a long time to build, because it's written in Haskell, and you end up needing to build Haskell first. Mercurial is python based, easy to hack with and extend. And of course git is what's used for Linux, very widely available, lots of tools.
Subversion is, I think, pretty much the baseline of modern SCM; it would be a good choice too, but it does force you into having a fixed central server; either you, or your Indian collegues, will have to check out and commit over a long pipe.
Subversion (SVN) is obviously a popular choice. It's also quite commonly used now (Google Code, Sourceforge, etc.) so there should be lots of documentation out there about its use. Git is a good choice too, but the lack of GUI interfaces available makes it not fit your requirements so well.
I'm assuming since you're using .NET you're developing in a Windows environment primarily. Check out VisualSVN products. They make a great (FREE) Server product for actually running a full fledged svn server in a windows environment (it supports SSL, group/user authentication including Active Directory support).
They also offer a Visual Studio plugin, although it is not free (although quite reasonable at $49/developer). AnkhSvn is another Visual Studio client plugin option. It's not quite as great, but it is free.
http://www.visualsvn.com/server/ - Free Windows SVN Server
http://www.visualsvn.com/visualsvn/ - Visual Studio Client Plugin
http://ankhsvn.open.collab.net/ - Free Visual Studio Client Plugin
So, I think Subversion using VisualSVN's product offerings are going to give you the best windows/gui integration at a very reasonable price.
SVN sucks quite badly over HTTP in my experience. You will want to pull your hair out if your repo is of any significant size especially with a Trans-Atlantic round trip stuffed in there. Personally I'd go with Mercurial.
Google has recently done some research on Git versus Mercurial. The largest advantage that Mercurial had was that it played extremely well with HTTP.
TortoiseHg, while not quite as mature as TortoiseSVN, is a pretty solid Windows GUI. Although you mentioned you're not very interested in branching and merging, these are common activities in all DVCS. Fortunately because they are common, they are well supported in the UI and relatively painless activities overall.
Check out Subversion: http://subversion.tigris.org/
Has GUI plugin as well VS .NET. http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/ http://ankhsvn.open.collab.net/
All open source & free.
My recomendation is Subversion + TortoiseSVN (for Explorer integration) + AnkhSVN (integration with Visual Studio).
I think you shouldn't use any of the distributet version control systems because after that you will have to get back to centralized one which could be painful.
As mentioned SVN and Tortoise are the way to go.
I'd also get a license for visual SVN (http://www.visualsvn.com/) it's not free but it is really good, it uses Tortoise svn and gives you it's features in the IDE.
Team Foundation Server is quite easy to use and is easy to get started with coming from a source safe background (shares common terminology for commands). However with part of the development being in India, they may be more knowledgeable about Subversion.
If you use Subversion, i would look at VisualSVN. It's fantastic, simple to use, and quick to set up (TFS is a bit complicated to set up). VisualSVN offers an IDE plug-in ($50) and a server counterpart that bootstraps Subversion for windows machines (Free)
Mercurial is great and really easy.
Give Mercurial a shot. BitBucket has free accounts you can play around with. I've written more about why I use it here.
Have you tried SVN and using TortoiseSVN for the Shell Extension?
I second SVN and TortoiseSVN.
I moved from CVS and WinCVS and I am very happy with this setup.
I would recommend the source control where most of your team members have the most experience or where you have someone on your team who is an expert for.
In my opinion besides the endless "git is better than Subversion is better than CVS"-discussion I don't think the differences between them is what matters.
It's more important to have someone who really knows how to use whichever system you decide to use.
Setting up Subversion for .Net development has gotten easier. You could start by installing Visual SVN Server. This will install Subversion Server on a windows machine, will work you through setting up your repository, authentication, etc.
Then for Visual Studio integration with Subversion you can try VisualSVN, it's not free but well worth the license. But if your budget don't allow it, Ankhsvn also works fine, I use it everyday.
I had to make a similar decision several months back. I liked SVN a lot, but the lack of GUI for the administration was a big issue for my team. TFS was ideal, but very expensive.
We decided to meet halfway and license SourceGear Vault. It doesn't meet your requirement of "free," unfortunately. Although I did find its comparison with SVN to be interesting.
If you're certain you're going to Team System, then I believe there's a 180-day trial you can use. That way, you son't have to switch.
Have you tried unfuddle (http://unfuddle.com/). Fulfills all your requirements.
Another vote for SVN.
For a lightweight SVN server on windows look at sliksvn. It doesn't do http source browsing, but is a much smaller and easier setup than apache based servers for small groups.
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I am a student and I always develop projects on my own, mainly with Ruby On Rails.
I noticed that even a simple project may become complex if you can't easily rescue deleted code and pass from a version to another. Time Machine backups are not enough.
I would like to use a version control system, but they seem not to be intended for single-user projects. Am I wrong? If so, what policy and software do you use for managing your code?
There is nothing that says you can't use a standard version control system if you are a single user. Doing so would definitely keep you from experiencing some of the more painful problems such as merging files changed at the same time and other conflicts that arise from multiple developers.
Based on this, you could look into any of the version control systems (I believe Subversion is far and away the most popular right now) and pick out the one that will most closely match your needs, or has the interfaces you are most comfortable with.
Distributed version control systems are just for you: look for Bazaar, Git or Mercurial. They are lightweight, local commits are easy and you can always revert to a previous version. With a hosting provider such as GitHub, you can publish your projects, you get backup for free and you can easily share the projects with other potential contributors. Collaboration is easy because merging your changes is also a lightweight operation.
It is definitely a good idea to use version control software, and other project software on your own projects. These tools are not just for team working, although they allow team working. Beyond the obvious reasons for keeping track of your changes to the project it is a good idea to use SCM tools so you are familar with what the industry is using.
Subversion is widespread, and is quite a good bet as it's successfully replaced the earlier and older CVS tool. It relies on a central repository where the code is stored and can be backed up: where I have used SVN for personal projects and small team projects I have backed up to CD. If your project is opensource there are sites like sourceforge that support svn which you can use for hosting.
However as some of the other posters have indicated, a personal project might benefit more from a distributed system: git is increasing in popularity since git-hub has come online and porting efforts to are succeeding. http://git-scm.com/ It is likely that tools like these will grow in popularity over the coming years as they allow a greater number of people to participate on the same code. The idea of one central repository is relaxed giving each developer the ability to version track different designs and only give back to the community the versions they complete.
One of the benefits with using SCM for all projects personal or not, is that a separate server can be set up testing a version of the code. Automated testing on the latest version of the code (using a Continuous Integration Server or similar) can improve the quality of the software you are writing.
Some highly experienced software developers talk about a rhythm where they make incremental changes checking in frequently. Getting into the habit of making small changes which are complete and checking them in: is a good practice to get into for group working.
I would recommend Subversion. It's free and relatively simple, and learning a little about it may well beneficial in the future. It's cross platform and also available on a variety of hosted systems.
See also: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/250984/do-i-really-need-version-control
and: Using Version Control for Home Development?
Subversion!
You can install locally or use a hosted service. The services are nice if you want to switch between computers or use it as an offline backup. http://www.beanstalkapp.com/ has a free plan for personal use.
GitHub (git, not subversion) is also popular but I believe there is a small fee for personal projects.
Use git. It allows you to work without ever needing a server.
There are utilities for the command line and a GUI (older screenshots) too (for linux, windows and OS X).
If you later want to share or publish your project you can easily push it to a site like github.
Even for personal projects, if they become bigger than something you write a few hours, a version control system will be very beneficial.
Here are a few good points:
Many version control systems have good integration with IDEs.
Branching will allow you to experiment without the fear of having to take a long time to revert the changes. The branch can later be merged to the main trunk if needed.
Having a history of changes can be helpful, and tagging will allow setting milestones.
More efficient storage than full backups using regular copying of files.
Extra metadata (such as commit comments) can be attached.
Many version control systems are free!
I personally use a Subversion server running on my system which I access via the Subclipse plug-in in Eclipse, which I find to be very helpful in keeping track of my personal projects.
If you're interested in Subversion, Version Control with Subversion is a very helpful source in learning about the concepts, and how to set up and get started with Subversion.
Version control systems may be a little difficult at first, but it's definitely worth the effort to set up!
I'm very wary of using "always" in any answer I give on SO...
ALWAYS use version control. These days it's free AND easy to do. There's simply no reason ever not to use it. If it's an hour long project...good...it's an hour long project that's in version control now.
My solution has been slicehost(ok...not free), redmine(free RoR bug tracker)git and gitosis. Starting up a new project adds about five minutes on to the front of any coding, but its five minutes well worth it.
Use SVN or Mercurial.
Both very appropriate for "home" usage, I think Mercurial is better for you because by default you'll be creating one repository per project ( oposed to SVN's one "big" repository that stores everything ), so it will be easier to backup individual projects or exchange sources with others if needed.
Both work in command line mode or using explorer-like interfaces ( Tortoise ) or plugins available for the most usual IDE.
I use subversion to manage all my projects. xp-dev.com is a free subversion hosting solution. Also, I think, if you install tortisesvn it installs a subversion server to use locally.
A complete different version control system is dropbox (www.getdrobox.com). It's not (only) intended for source code. It available (with smart OS integration) for Mac, Win and Linux plus private Web Interface.
It may be interesting for you.
One item you will like about git such as using github hosting is that you have a history of changes that you can go to and get the actual code source and thus 'rescue' previous code changes.
You could also use the dropbox approach in just backing up raw code to a folder on the cloud..
I have used both methods for personal projects.
Hosted version control such as beanstalkapp.com is very convenient, but do consider whether you want to hand your source to a third party. You could consider a local repository, backed up online with a solution which encrypts the contents locally before uploading. I do this with subversion, Amazon S3 and JungleDisk.
Bitbucket is an absolute must consideration for personal projects based on:
Free, unlimited, private repositories
Up to 5 users on their free account
Git and Mercurial support
This allows one to quickly spin up a repository without having to pay attention to how many repos are available under a paid source code hosting account.
It also allows projects that will enter the public domain to be simply forked to GitHub, etc.
Version control is always important.
Try a free online SVN like http://beanstalkapp.com/
Do a search and you can find lots of suggestions
I would highly recommend downloading VisualSVN Server. It's a very simple setup and will do exactly what you need.
you can use any version control system that exists just for single user development. as you said, even simple project can become a nightmare if you change something you think is better and it fails. download tortoise snv - it's free and pretty simple to use - and keep your working versions in repository. commit code that works, keep possible small changes (for example refactor one class), build it, test it if it works -> commit, if it doesn't and you don't know why you can allways revert changes and try again.
What would be the best version control system to learn as a beginner to source control?
Anything but Visual Source Safe; preferably one which supports the concepts of branching and merging. As others have said, Subversion is a great choice, especially with the TortoiseSVN client.
Be sure to check out (pardon the pun) Eric Sink's classic series of Source Control HOWTO articles.
I'd suggest you try Subversion, for example with the 1-click SVN installer. Try searching SO for "Subversion", and you'll find loads of questions with answers that point to good tutorials.
Good luck!
I'd go straight for Git. I've used subversion before, but always felt like I was doing it wrong. Git made sense from day one.
Useful resources:
Linus Torvals on Git
Scott Chacon "Getting Git"
There are a few core concepts that I think are important to learn:
Check-ins/check-outs (obviously)
Local versions vs. server versions
Mapping/Binding a local workspace to a remote store or repository.
Merging your changes back into a file that contains changes from
others.
Branching (what it is, when/why to use it)
Merging changes from a branch back into a main branch or trunk.
Most modern source control systems require some knowledge of the above topics and should help facilitate you learning them. Then you have distributed source control, which I don't have any experience with but is supposed to be fairly complicated and may not be suitable for a beginner.
Subversion is great because it has all of the modern features you'd want and is free.
Git is also becoming an increasingly popular option and is another free or very low cost alternative to Subversion. Knowledge regarding the concepts of branching and merging become critical for using Git, however.
You can use unfuddle as a free and easy way to experiment with both Git and Subversion. I use it to host a couple of subversion repositories for some side projects I've worked on in the past.
I'm not and advanced source control user, but I'm learning. Here is my experience with source control products:
A long time ago, the company I was working for at the time decided to use source control. They introduced the concept to developers and got eveyone willing to give it a try. They chose to use PVCS, and implemented it. Before too long, developers would have to coordinate to lock/unlock modules and objects and we really didn't see much benefit.
A few years later, I was playing around with making an open source project and at the time rubyforge was offering CVS repositories. I tried it out and it was marginally better than PVCS. Granted I was the only one using the repository. I did however become frustrated when I tried to rearrange the structure of my files because I didn't like the way I had initially imported them. It didn't really work out in CVS.
A few years after that I was working on another personal project and my web hosting provider offered easy to setup Subversion (SVN) repositories. It took me a little bit of research to get it up and running correctly, but once I got past the initial learning curve, I liked it.
Not long after that I realized that I liked having source control and that my current job didn't have it. So I evangelized, and after a long period of time, my team implemented Source Safe because we work in Visual Studio and are generally a Microsoft shop. I was eager to use it, but before long I found that I was losing files and that Visual Studio was putting things in the wrong place and that I'd work on a project for a while and then go to export my work to another location and find that it either wouldn't export or would only export some of the projects in a solution. This made me realize that even though I thought I was using a "version control system", the copy of the code that was most secure, robust and complete was my working copy. The exact opposite of what source control is supposed to do.
So last week I was so fed up with Source Safe that I went searching. After looking into a few solutions, I decided to try git. I won't say it's all been roses, since I have again had some learning curve to get it to do what I want it to do, However, I have liked it enough to convert all of my work and personal projects over to it. One of the really nice things about it is that I don't need a centralized repository so I can use it without going through a ton of red tape at work to get it installed.
So in short I would reccommend git, I use Mysysgit in windows and it has the added bonus of giving me a bash shell. On Linux you can just install it from your package manager. If you don't like git, try subversion. If you don't like either of those you probably won't like CVS or PVCS either. Under no circumstances try Source Safe, it's awful.
I found http://unfuddle.com saved me messing about with installing SVN or git. You can get a free account in there and use either of those - plus you can use your OpenID there.
Then you avoid having to mess about setting it up right and focus on how you're going to use it!
Vault from SourceGear.com is superb. It is free for single users and provides a superb VS 2005/2008 interface. I love it!
rp
#Ian Nelson:
I agree with you that Source Safe is bad as a source control system, but keep in mind that using Source Safe is a lot better than "carrying around floppy disks" as Joel Spolsky said.
For a beginner it might not be a bad idea, since the cost of having no source control at all is a lot higher.
Each tool has it's strengths and weaknesses. It's very much a question of what your requirements are. Unfortunately with this issue, like many others, it's often not the best tool that is selected but the one that someone is familiar with. For instance, if you don't require many branches and your team is small and local, almost any vcs will do the job (except SourceSafe). Things change if you need branches (which almost by necessity means you also need to do merges), your team is distributed, you need advanced security (subcontractors are not allowed to entire source tree), task tracking, etc. There is also the question of cost in three different ways: cost of licenses, cost of maintenance (some tools are so complicated that you in practice need someone just to control the repositories) and cost of training.
Therefore suggesting one tool over another is like suggesting what would be the best programming language.
Just some pointers:
StarTeam is the easiest of the tools
I have used. It required very little
training. I got a one-day training
since I was to be the maintainer.
This maintaining took me less than 30
minutes per week. Users I "trained"
by writing a two-page manual and
after that I had very few questions
to answer.
Continuus was the other end of the
scale as far as ease of use is
concerned. On the other hand task handling was great and it offered good support for release management. Trouble is, even as a release manager I never thought ease of making releases (it was once you learned how, but that took a considerable amount of time) should be more important than the daily work that developers do.
Merging and branch creating differs
wildly between tools. Some tools make
this simple, like git and ClearCase
(although the latter is very slow)
some basically force you to do the
merge by hand. If you need to do
merges a lot, the cost can get high.
ClearCase was also expensive in all
three categories mentioned before
(although it has to be said we used
all the advanced stuff which isn't
necessary). Git on the other hand
lacks a good UI and some of concepts
differ from what you might be used
to. Git's security features are also
lacking (gitosis addresses some
issues but not all).
Most tools I have used are also quite
slow. Tools like PVCS/Dimensions was
just slow, no matter what (basic
things like opening a directory in
the repository), some very slow in
more specific ways (like ClearCase).
From the tools I have used I would select StarTeam if your developers are not very experienced (and if you don't mind paying the license, which is quite expensive) and git if you have some experienced vcs guys onboard who can set up the environment to other guys. Mercurial also looks like an interesting competitor and seems to have slightly better UI's.
Continuus, PVCS/Dimensions and ClearCase are just too slow, too complex and too expensive for almost any project. If someone insist on selecting one of these, I would go for ClearCase.
I haven't used Subversion which many seem to like (yet, I have a feeling this is about to change in the near future) so can't comment how it compares to the other tools I have used (usually as a build and/or release manager).
As for the first tool to choose, problem with Git, Bazaar and Mercurial is they are distributed vcs's. This is different from the traditional server-client model where you have a central repository. For just learning the stuff I would recommend also reading about the concepts. Branching for instance is something that you might not understand correctly just by trying yourself (there are different branch strategies for different situations). Plus it is very different if you are the only one accessing the repository, merge conflicts for instance wouldn't be a problem (you might get to see them but you would easily also fix them since you know the code in both branches). Of course you would learn about check outs, check ins, and such but I don't think these issues are particularily difficult in the first place.
Added problem with vcs's is that they tend to use different terms. In StarTeam which is otherwise easy to use they for some reason insist on using the terms "check out" and "check out and lock". The latter is what most people think the first does. There is a reason for this (you can edit files even if you don't have an exclusive lock), but it would still make much more sense to call these "Get" and "Check out" to avoid confusion.
Anything, but I would learn a modern system like git or subversion myself. My first VCS was RCS, but I got the basics down.
Well, if you are just wanting to learn on your own, I would say you should go with something free, like subversion. If you are a company who has never used source control before, then it really depends on your needs.
My first exposure was CVS with WinCVS as a client. it was horrid. Next was Subversion, with TortoiseSVN and Eclipse's integration. It was intuitive, and heavenly. I think that using CVS with TortoiseCVS and Eclipse's would be nice as well, though I prefer the way SVN handles revisioning. The entire repository is versioned with each check in, not individual files.
I'd also recommend Subversion. It does not take too long to set up, it is free, and there is a really good book available online that goes over the basics as well as some advanced topics: http://svnbook.red-bean.com/
Subversion with tortoisesvn. (tortoisesvn because you can see a lot of what goes on visually and will provide a good jumping off point for the command line stuff. ) There is tons of documentation out there and most likely you will see it at least one point in your career. Almost every company I have worked for and interviewed with runs SVN.
If you're looking to learn a commercial product while getting started Perforce provides a free client and server, with the server supporting two users and five client workspaces.
At my previous place of employment it was used religiously not only for code by our programmers, but for art assets and game levels, and my own documentation.
Subversion is good place to start with. It is very stable and modern version control system.
Best online resource to start learning about Subversion would be Version Control with Subversion. There are lot of choices as far as server and client softwares are concerned. I personally prefer (for Windows environment).
VisualSVN server
TortoiseSVN shell-integrated client and
AnkhSVN Visual Studio Subversion Add-On
Again, with Subversion there are lot of options available. Also, it is a continually evolving version control system (unlike outdated SourceSafe). It could be easily integrated with numerous automated build tools (CruiseControl, FinalBuilder) and bug/issue tracking systems (JIRA).
If you are looking for state-of-the-art version control systems, go for Git(developed by Linus Torvalds). But if you are totally new to version control systems, I would suggest start with subversion.
I've been programming for 10+ years now for the same employer and only source code control we've ever used is VSS. (Sorry - That's what they had when I started). There's only ever been a few of us; two right now and we usually work alone, so VSS has worked ok for us. So, I have two questions: 1) Should we switch to something else like subversion, git, TFS, etc what exactly and why (please)? 2) Am I beyond all hope and destined to eternal damnation because VSS has corrupted me (as Jeff says) ?
Wow - thanks for all the great responses!
It sounds like I should clearify a few things. We are a MS shop (Gold parntner) and we mostly do VB, ASP.NET, SQL Server, sharepoint & Biztalk work. I have CS degree so I've done x86 assembly C, C++ on DEC Unix and Slackware Linux in a "time out of mind" ...
My concern with VSS is that now I'm working over a VPN a lot more and VSS's performance sux and I'm afraid that our 10+ y/o version 5 VSS database is going to get hoosed...
There's the LAN service that's supposed to speed things up, but Ive never used it and I'm not sure it helps with corruption - has anyone used the VSS LAN service? (new with VSS 2005)
I'd probably go with Subversion, if I were you. I'm a total Git fanatic at this point, but Subversion certainly has some advantages:
simplicity
abundance of interoperable tools
active and supportive community
portable
Has really nice Windows shell integration
integrates with visual studio (I think - but surely through a third party)
Git has many, many other advantages, but the above tend to be the ones people care about when asking general questions like the above.
Edit: the company I now work for is using VisualSVN server, which is free. It makes setting up a Subversion repository on a Windows server stupid simple, and on the client we're using TortoiseSVN (for shell integration) and AnkhSVN for Visual Studio support. It's quite good, and should be fairly easy for even VSS users to pick up.
Latter-day Edit: So....nearly eight years later, I would never recommend Subversion to anyone for any reason. I don't really recant, per se, because I think my advice was valid at the time. However, in 2016, Subversion retains almost none of the advantages it used to have over Git. The tooling for Git is superior to (and much more diverse) what it once was, and in particular, there's GitHub and other good Git hosting providers (BitBucket, Beanstalk, Visual Studio Online, just off the top of my head). Visual Studio now has Git support out-of-the-box, and it's actually pretty good. There are even PowerShell modules to give a more native Windows experience to denizens of the console. Git is even easier to set up and use than Subversion and doesn't require a server component. Git has become as ubiquitous as any single tool can be, and you really would only be cheating yourself to not use it (unless you just really want to use something not-Git). Don't misunderstand - this isn't me hating on Subversion, but rather me recognizing that it's a tool from another time, rather like a straight razor for shaving.
Looks like SubVersion is the winner here. I'd do yourself a favor and use VisualSVN Server. It's free and will save you a bunch of installation headaches.
If you're used to the way VSS works, check out (no pun intended) Sourcegear's vault. It's an excellent way to migrate away from VSS as it comes with IDE integration and supports check out / check in, but when you're ready and feel comfortable you can also move to the edit update commit style of programming found in SVN.
It's free for single developers, runs on IIS and is built on .net so it should be a fairly familiar stack for you to switch to.
Whatever you do, don't change for the sake of changing.
If it's working for you and you're not having problems with it, I don't see any reason to switch.
For what it's worth, Perforce is a potential option if you truly stick to 1 or 2 users. Current perforce docs says you have have 2 users and 5 clients without having to start purchasing licenses.
You might have reasons to switch to perforce depending on your workflow and if you have need of branching the way perforce does it. Not being overly familar with some the other products mentioned here, I can't tell you how perforce compares in the feature department for things like branching, etc.
It is speedy, and it's been rock solid for us (300+ developers on a 10+ year old codebase). We store several T of info and it's been quite responsive. With a small number of users, I doubt that you'd experience many performance troubles assuming you had good hardware for your server.
Having used VSS before, I believe that you can get so many benefits out of a better SCM system that switching should be considered regardless of whether you have corruption or not. Branching alone might be worth it for you. A true client/server model, better interfaces (programmatically and command line) are a couple of other things that could really help just improve your workflow and help somewhat with productivity.
In summary, my view of Perforce is:
It's fast and quite reliable
Plenty of cross platform client tools (windows, unix, mac, etc)
it's free for 2 users and 5 clients
Integrates into developer studio (and other tools)
Has a powerful branching system (that might or might not be right for you).
Has several scriptable interfaces (python, perl, ruby, C++)
Certainly YMMV -- I only offer this alternative up as something that might be worthwhile looking into.
I've recently started using Mercurial for some of my work. It's a distributed system like Git but seems easier to use and seems far better supported on Windows, the latter of which was crucial for me.
With distributed source code control every user has a complete local copy of the repository. If you're the only person working on a project, as you say you often are, this can simplify things a lot since you just create your own repository and do all your commits etc. locally. If you want to bring on other developers later you can just push the full contents of your repository - current versions and all history - to another system, either on a shared server or directly on to another users' workstation.
If you're working only with a local repository remember you'll need a also backup solution as there isn't a copy of all your code on a shared server.
I think that Mercurial has lots of other advantages over Subversion, but it does have a big downside which has already been mentioned as a plus point of Subversion: there a lots of third party tools and integrations for Subversion. As Mercurial hasn't been around nearly as ong the choice is much less. On Windows it seems that you either have to use the command line (my choice) or the TortoiseHg Windows Explorer integration.
VSS is horrible. I may be channelling Spolsky (not sure if he's said this), but using VSS is actually worse than not using source control at all. Despite its name, it isn't safe. It creates the illusion of safety without providing it.
Without VSS, you'd probably be making regular backups of your code. With VSS, you'll think, "Mehh, it's already under source control. Why bother backing up?" Great until it corrupts your entire codebase and you lose everything. (This, incidentally, happened at a company I worked at.)
Get rid of VSS as soon as you can and switch to a real source control solution.
Don't worry about VSS corrupting you, worry about VSS corrupting your data. It does not have a good track record in that department.
Back up frequently if you do not switch to a different version control system. Backups should be happening daily even with other SCMs, but it's doubly important with VSS.
I like using Subversion for my personal projects. I could go down the list of features and pretend like it brings a lot to the table that other source control systems don't, but there's tons of good ones out there and the right choices is really a matter of style. If you check in after each small change (i.e. one checkin per function change), then many people can work on the same source file with very low risk of merge conflicts in practically anything but VSS (I haven't used VSS in years but from what I remember only one person at a time can work on a file.) If this isn't ever going to happen to you, I feel like the best course of action is to use what you know. VSS is better than no source control at all, but it feels restrictive to me these days.
I don't think you're beyond hope because you're asking if it would be better to switch; you're beyond hope when the answer is obvious and you ignore the evidence.
Even if you don't change source control systems, you ought to pick one like SVN or git and spend a few weeks reading about it and making a small project using it; it always helps to sharpen the saw.
I don't agree with the people that say that if you don't have problems you'd better not switch.
I think that SCM is some of the disciplines a good developer should know well, and frankly, even if you master VSS you are just experimenting a small fraction of the advantages a good SCM tool and SCM strategy can do for you and for your team.
Obviously evaluate and test the alternatives first in a non-production environment.
At work we use subversion with TortoiseSVN - works very nicely but it is philosophically different to VSS (not really a problem if there's just you but worth being aware of). I really like the fact that the whole repository has a revision number.
Given a free choice I'd've probably gone with vault but at the time I had zero budget.
I'm looking at things for personal use. There are reasons to use subversion and reasons to use something completely different. The alternatives I'm considering are Vault (as before, free for single use) and Bazaar. GIT I've had to dismiss as I am, unashamedly, a Windows person and right now GIT just isn't.
The distributed nature of GIT and the option of private/temporary checkins (assuming I've understood what I've read) is attractive - hence my looking at Bazaar.
Update: I did some more digging and playing and I actually went for Mercurial for personal use, integrated install with TortoiseHg makes things very simple and it seems to be well regarded. I'm still trying to work out how to force an automagic mirror of commits to a server and there appear to be some minor limitations to the ignore function but its doing the job nicely so far...
Murph
I'd say stick with what works for you. Unless you are having issues with VSS, why switch? Subversion is swell, though a little sticky to begin using it. TFS is far better than VSS, though it is fairly expensive for such a small team. I have not used git so I can't really speak to it.
i used vss for years until switching to svn about two years ago. my biggest complaints about vss were the poor network performance (that problem may be solved now) and the pessimistic locking of files. svn solved both those, is easy to set up (i use collabnet server and tortoisesvn client, although there are two good visual studio plugins: visualsvn - commercial, and ankhsvn - open source), easy to use and administer, and well documented.
it's tempting to say "if it's not broken then don't fix it" but you would get to learn a more modern source control tool and, perhaps more importantly, new ways of using source control (e.g. more frequent branching and merging) that the new tool would support.
If you only have 2 people, and you mostly work independantly, git is going to give you a lot more flexibility, power, and be far and away the fastest to work with.
It is however a pain in the backside to use. Using VSS you're obviously programming for windows - if you're doing Win32 API stuff in C then git will be a learning curve but will be quite interesting.
If the depths of your knowledge however only extend to ASP and Visual Basic, just use subversion. Walk before you can run.
** I'm not trying to say if you only know VB you're dumb or anything like that, but that git can be very finicky and picky to use (if you've used the WinAPI in C you know all about picky and finicky), and you may want a more gradual introduction to SCM than git provides
If you are a one man show and strictly a Microsoft shop, then SourceGear Vault is definitely a prime candidate for switching too.
Features:
Free for Single User, great for you
It uses SQL Server for it's backend, therefore data reliability is huge
It has atomic check-ins, all files checked-in at the same time are arranged in a group and are called a changeset.
VisualStudio integration.
Has a tool for importing from SourceSafe, therefore you can keep your history
The client communicates with the server over HTTP, therefore accessing the source outside the office remotely can be setup very easily and performs well, because they only transfer the deltas of the changes being submitted and received. You can use SSL to secure the connection.
I would definately consider this as an option.
If you want a full Life Cycle in one package then you probably want want to look at Visual Studio Team System. It does require a server, but you can get a "Action Pack" from MS that includes all the licencies that you need for "Team Foundation Server Workgroup Edition" from the Partner centre.
With this you will get Bug, Risk and Issue tracking as well as many other features :)
Source Control
Work Item Tracking (Requirements, Bugs, Issues, Risks and Tasks)
Reporting on your project data (Work Item Tracking, Build, Checkins and more in one qube)
Code Analysis
Unit Testing
Load Testing
Performance Analysis
Automated Build