I'm trying to find a free software that would provide a web interface to a file system (so you can add / remove files / directories, possibly edit them). If possible, it should handle versioning (only simple things needed : back to previous versions), and user management.
Can you point me to anything like that ? thanks
Update1 : I'm looking for a solution that would work on unix (e.g. linux).
Update2 : something like a subversion web interface on an Apache server would do the trick, alas I couldn't find any user friendly subversion web interface, Do you ? Plus it shold allow users to create new content.
You want something that supports something called Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (look up WebDAV). Apple's MobileMe does this, as does Subversion over httpd, as does MS Sharepoint.
In fact, if you just want WebDAV functionality for free, try out Subversion and Apache.
Have you looked at DropBox? It's a hosted solution (2GB for free). It has a web interface that allows you to do rollbacks/etc.
Related
On a network I use I'm not able to install any third-party applications. There's just MS Office plus a web-browser.
But, I want to introduce some version control of the Excel spreadsheets I'm developing.
As I said, I can't install any other apps, so an SVN/Git client is out of the question.
Does anybody know of a VCS for which the client runs in a web-browser? I need to add files, submit new versions, compare deltas, etc.
I'm not just looking for web-based read-only browsing of a repo - I need full functionality via the browser.
I welcome your thoughts.
Google Docs/Drive has versioning, comments, sharing, etc. and may be able to do everything you need.
Basically, I want to get an update of the standard command-line subversion client for Windows. I used to be able to get downloads of this quite easily, but it seems like registration is required these days.
I object to registration, but equally, I prefer not to use workarounds that e.g. involve registering with details that won't stay valid.
I already have TortoiseSVN - this isn't about clients in general, but specifically about the standard command-line client. I also don't need the server stuff - just the client.
It looks like I can download the source, but building from that probably involves the usual dependency-finding issues and so on. As this is likely to be a recurring issue, I'd prefer to avoid it if possible.
I'll be more than happy with a torrent link. Googling for that specifically, though, just leads to a lot of what look like pirate versions of commercial clients.
Any ideas? Or is there some good reason for collecting these registration details that might override my objections?
EDIT
Applogies to everyone I "sigh"ed at or whatever over SlikSVN suggestions. Clearly, I need to do better at avoiding making bad assumptions.
Which site are you downloading from? Just taking a look at the download links from the SVN project home (http://subversion.apache.org/packages.html), I see four options for Windows, several of which do not have registration, at least. The SlikSVN link is free and has command line utilities.
You could also install Cygwin, which is definitely free and comes with other useful utilities.
You can get a free one here:
http://www.sliksvn.com/en/download
As you said, you can certainly download and build the source code; it's free software under the Apache License 2.0. But if you want to download an executable without Collab's registration, try SlikSvn.
Binary distributions of the subversion client are available from the official subversion site.
http://subversion.apache.org/packages.html
We have an application at work which is web-based and comes with a bundled web server (Apache tomcat), and is for network monitoring/patch management. It allows for personalisation, all sorts of rules, custom UI design using proprietary components and definition language, and even custom code to fire on events (based on Java).
I am in a team of several developers, each of who will be customising this app to meet various requirements. As it's a server app, not a codebase, what's the best way to setup a dev environment for >1 user?
If there is one single shared VM with this app, I don't know how good source control like TFS would work with this sort of system? I think also, developers working on various parts of the project may even need the same file at the same time (though TFS does do multiple check-outs).
What is the best way to develop against this sort of product? Bare in mind, even with personal VMs and an instance of the app, changes have to be merged to one central instance. Something keeps making me think about how app-virtualisation could help with this?
Thanks
If it is just an instance of Tomcat (even though it was bundled) couldn't you put the whole Tomcat directory and all of its subdirectories under source control? You just need to check in the non-binary parts, so exclude all the .jar, .exe, .tar.gz and .dll files when you check in. That's what I would do, unless I misunderstood your question.
I'm not familiar with the source control software that you mentioned. I have been using SVN (which is free) and TortoiseSVN as a client (also free). Just an option if your software can't support what I've suggested.
Does anyone have any insight into what, if any, provisions the WebDAV protocol makes available for version control?
In my never-ending pursuit of a good way to integrate designer tools like SharePoint Designer or Expression with a real source control (which must support live preview), I'm about resigned to the idea that I'll have to write a FPSE server (not hard, but the protocol might not be supported in future revs of the MS tools) that knows how to translate the check-in/check-out RPCs to SVN or TFS.
(I can't install IIS on the designer's machines, Cassini doesn't support classic ASP, and we need live save/preview. Apparently this is the perfect trifecta of stuff that doesn't work together).
WebDAV seems to have a potentially longer lifespan than FPSE, but I can't find a lot of information on any protocol support for check-in/check-out, only folder and file locks. Atomic commits would be nice, but I may be barking up a beanstalk with no climbing gear.
It's all in RFC 3253.
I'm currently working at a small web development company, we mostly do campaign sites and other promotional stuff. For our first year we've been using a "server" for sharing project files, a plain windows machine with a network share. But this isn't exactly future proof.
SVN is great for code (it's what we use now), but I want to have the comfort of versioning (or atleast some form of syncing) for all or most of our files.
What I essentially want is something that does what subversion does for code, but for our documents/psd/pdf files.
I realize subversion handles binary files too, but I feel it might be a bit overkill for our purposes.
It doesn't necessarily need all the bells and whistles of a full version control system, but something that that removes the need for incremental naming (Notes_1.23.doc) and lessens the chance of overwriting something by mistake.
It also needs to be multiplatform, handle large files (100 mb+) and be usable by somewhat non technical people.
SVN is great for binaries, too. If you're afraid you can't compare revisions, I can tell you that it is possible for Word docs, using Tortoise.
But I do not know, what you mean with "expanding the versioning". SVN is no document management system.
Edit:
but I feel it might be a bit overkill for our purposes
If you are already using SVN and it fulfils your purposes, why bother with a second system?
If you have a windows 2003 server, you can have a look at Sharepoint Services 3.0 (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/sharepoint/bb684453.aspx).
It can do version control for documents, and has a nice integration with Office, starting with Office xp, but office 2003 and 2007 are better. Office and PDF files can be indexed (via Adobe IFilter), and searched. You can also add IFilters to search metadata in your documents.
Regarding large files, by default the max filesize is 50MB, but it can be configured.
We've just moved over to Perforce and have been really happy with it. It's a commercial product, but it's so powerful and easy to use that it's worth the price per seat IMHO.
A decent folder structure and naming scheme?
VCS don't really handle images and such very well - would it be possible to have the code in a VCS (SVN/Git/Mercurial etc), along-side a sensible folder structure for the binary-assets (source photos, Photoshop PSD files, Illustrator files and so on)?
It wouldn't handle syncing, but a central file-server would achieve the same thing.
It would require some enforcing and kitten-herding to get people to name things properly, but I think having a version folder for each asset (like someproject/asset/header_logo/v01/header_logo_v01.psd) will basically be like a VCS, but easier to move between different revisions (no vcs checkout blah -r 234 when a client decides they prefered v02 more than v03)
Your question is interesting because your specifying that it be suitable for a small office. At the enterprise level, I would recommend something along the line of EMC Documentum's eRoom, but obviously thats going to be way more than you need, and more than you want cost-wise as well. I'm not sure of the licensing details on this but I've heard that if your office has MS Office, you have access to Sharepoint, which might work well for you. I'm also sure there are a lot of SAAS implementations of this kind of stuff, so you may want to look at that, keeping in mind that the servers will not be hosted by you, so if the material is extremely sensitive, thats obviously not the proper route.
You might want to consider using a Mac as your server and using Time Machine to backup your shared folders. Doing this gives you automatic backups and allows you to share through Samba so everyone can have a network drive on their computer. A Mac server is probably overkill. A Mac Mini would do for a small office or a repurposed desktop machine.
You might also consider Amazon's S3 service to do offline backups. Since it's a pay-as-you-go service this can scale with use, and if you feel you want to move to something else you can always download your data and take it somewhere else.
Windows Vista features local file versioning in its file system, which can be useful, but is limited in terms of teamwork. However, if somebody overwrites somebody else's file, a new version is stored as it should be.
Also consider KnowledgeTree. Have a look at it, some demos/screenshots are available at
http://www.knowledgetree.com/
It has a free open source Community Edition - so it's cost effective. We haven't tried it, but we chose this one over other systems for a small business looking for document versioning solution.