What is the concept of each?
When is it ok to shelve your changes instead of checking in?
Shelved means the changes are set aside for you to work on later.
Checked in means that the changes are made available to the rest of the team, will be in the build and will eventually ship.
Very different. Think of shelving as a tool for context switching when you're not done with a task. Checking in means you're done (at least a part of it).
Shelve your changes when you want to save the changes that you have made, but need to go back to the previous version to make other changes (perhaps, bug fixes) that you want to deploy without the updates you are currently working on. Since you're usually checking in pretty regularly, I find this to be a rare occurence -- like I just deployed to the QA box and an error was immediately found. I'll shelve that day's changes bringing me back to the QA deployed version, make the update, then unshelve my changes -- merging the two as necessary. Any longer than that and you'll probably be looking to check out a previous version and branch instead. I'd be happy to hear of other experiences where shelving has proved more useful, though.
Other users can download your shelvesets by searching for them, so it is a good way to pass code around for reviews. however you will get an error if you try to unshelve code files that you already have checked out, so you need a clean environment ready.
I often shelve my changes at the end of the day if I'm working on something big that I can't check in. That way, if my PC dies overnight, I've got a backup on the server.
Darcy gets it spot on. You can also think of shelving as a private branch that is not publicly visible for the most part. Shelvesets can also be deleted completely, not like deleting checked in code. If you delete a shelfset it is gone forever.
Everyone above has said so much true and I learned allot from it.
Just to add my experience, correct me if I am wrong. In a project, we have a configuration file mypc.json specific to each PC of the developer. We usually override it when running server locally. Other team members have the same file name with different configurations in it. No one wants their file to be pushed with the same name to the development branch. So I use shelve to save these type of changes. Whenever I need these configurations I can easily apply changes from shelve and my environment configurations are back in my project.
Related
I am studying how to use GitHub to collaborate with other people.
I have already set up Collaborators for one of my project and they have been able to download it.
But I don't know how to go for the next step. In other words, after they make their contribution; how are they supposed to upoad the result of their work, so that I can get it?
Yes indeed, by following the guides I have been able to make an update to a test project.
But everything is not quite clear yet.
I follow the process of creating-a-branch -> editing-something -> creating-a-pull-request -> merging-the-branch.
Then I delete the branch since it is no more needed. Apparently it works, but I can still see the deleted branch after, so it doesn't seem to be really deleted.
Starting July 2019, using GitHub Desktop, as part of its epic "branch pruning" and its 2.1.0 release, will prune those remote tracking branches for you.
Branches that have been merged and deleted on GitHub.com will now be pruned after two weeks.
See desktop/desktop issue 750:
We decided in taking a very conservative posture that we would only delete branches that aren't actively in use (hence the 14 days requirement) and don't have anything on them that's ahead of the default branch on GitHub. This combination, in addition to the branch being deleted on GitHub.com, seems relatively uncontroversial, but we're definitely going to listen to feedback we receive in the weeks and months after this ships to make sure it aligns with people's expectations and isn't overly aggressive.
Because we've taken an extremely conservative approach here, we don't intend to provide the ability to toggle it as a setting.
If you use a particularly branch frequently, this will never prune that branch, and it's restricted only to branches where there is no additional work that hasn't been merged into the default branch on GitHub.
In other words, we set this up intentionally such that users should never lose any work, which is our primary concern when deleting things. Hope that makes sense, and appreciate the feedback.
I worked with Windows Eclipse CVS and CVS did not allow me to overwrite the latest revisions – I needed to update first. At the same time one developer working on Mac constantly overwrote my files. We looked at this problem and found that his CVS Eclipse plugin allows overwriting the latest revisions without any warning.
Now I work with Mac myself using SVN Eclipse plugin and I accidentally overwrote the latest revisions from my co developer. How to prevent this overwriting? If this overwriting happens what is the graceful way of reverting to the previous revisions and committing them back to the repository?
Wait? Something is not right here...
CVS and Subversion will never let you overwrite someone else's changes. The whole purpose of version control is to allow multiple people to work on the same files at the same time.
There are two ways version control systems do this:
Checkout and Lock: The oldest systems used a checkout and lock system. That is, you checkout the code for changes, and no one else was allowed to checkout and make changes until you checked in your changes. The problem is that someone could checkout files for a week and forget to check them back in, or go on vacation. Then, everyone else is stuck unable to work.
Checkout, and first person who commits wins: In this system, two people can checkout the same file and do their work. However, the first person who finishes their changes and commits wins. The other person must do an update which will incorporate the first person's changes into their working copy before they can commit their changes. This is what Subversion and CVS do.
So, how in the world are you losing your changes? Or, how are you overwriting the other person's changes?
Sometimes this happens if you are sharing your checked out working copy with other people. This is wrong and should never be done. Instead, each user should have their own separate independent copy of the project (Heck, you can even have multiple version if you want). When your partner checks in their changes, it shouldn't affect your files.
What will happen is that when you try to commit your changes, you will be told that your working copy is out of date. You'll have to update your working copy and that will incorporate your partner's changes into your working copy. You should then verify that everything is okay, and then commit your working copy which will now include both your and your partner changes.
Does this answer your question? Are you sharing all sharing the same directory, or do you have your own working copy? Is there something else going on?
We are working on a single project, and also committing code at the end of day on SVN so that can get all update project. But issues is very often our code getting errors while committing code and projects get empty if someone get update at that time. So my question is are there any set of rules which we've to follow on committing so that every one go on straight path and no one get in trouble and save a lot time from these errors.
Thanks in advance. Cheers
Search Google, something similar to "source control best practices".
Top result has several tips. Sounds like the biggest problem you're facing is integrating with others' changes. Perhaps look into the following sections:
Incorporate others' changes frequently
Share your changes frequently
Coordinate with your co-workers
Investigate why you get errors. Blind application of rules is not good.
For example:
person A committed a code producing compilation error
why?
he finished his task, but hasn't checked build before committing to the trunk
why?
the entire build it too slow
solution: speed-up build, set up continuous build system which will check every commit and notify developers about problems as soon as possible
Another example:
person B committed a code which breaks the build
why?
he wanted to store his changes, but the task is not finished
solution: advice him to create a branch, when the task is finished it can be merged to the trunk (if branch lives for long time, merge changes from trunk to it periodically, then the merge will not be a problem)
There possible other scenarios. With more details you will be able to ask more precise question on StackOverflow and get better answers.
In case of use of SVN co-ordination is must between the team.
Make sure whenever you commit the code you have a idea about what are you committing.
The golden rule is "One developer One class".
If at all two different developers are working on same class. Ask them to maintain a document on what changes they have made. And, most important to mark a comments in a class it self.
There are some important things which need to be followed while committing the code. Whenever you see a conflict in your local files and server files. Make sure you go through every conflict and select the appropriate action.
Understand one important thing, whenever SVN is used one persons mistake can affect everyone.
Whenever possible, don't edit the same line of code as someone else
Leave meaningful comments on your commit messages
Comment your code
Make sure that all the code you commit compiles and runs as it should
Commit when appropriate ie: are passing off part of your code to be used by others or are done working on a feature
Make sure to communicate with other team members
If you find code that you don't know what it does, ask the author
If you're making major changes that will take a while to implement, use a branch and then merge it back in
I am starting to get a reputation at work as the "guy who breaks the builds".
The problem is not that I am writing dodgy code, but when it comes to checking my fixes back into source control, it all goes wrong.
I am regularly doing stupid things like :
forgetting to add new files
accidentally checking in code for a half fixed bug along with another bug fix
forgetting to save the files in VS before checking them in
I need to develop some habits / tools to stop this.
What do you regularly do to ensure the code you check in is correct and is what needs to go in?
Edit
I forgot to mention that things can get pretty chaotic in this place. I quite often have two or three things that Im working on in the same code base at any one time. When I check in I will only really want to check in one of those things.
A few suggestions:
try work on one issue at a time. It's easy to make unrelated changes to the codebase that then end up being committed as one big chunk with a poor log message. Git is excels here since you can so easily move switch branches, and stash and cherry pick changes.
run the status command before a commit to see which files you've touched and if you've created new files that need to be added to version control.
run the diff command to see what you've actually changed. Often times you find that you've left in some debug logging that should be taken out or made some unnecessary change that is just cluttering up the diff. Try to make your diffs as small and clean as possible.
make sure your working copy builds with your changes in it
update before checking in and make sure that your working copy builds with other peoples changes in it
run what ever smoke test suite you might have to make sure that your changes work correctly
make small and frequent commits. It's a lot easier to figure out what has broken the build when the breaking commit is small.
Other things that the team can do is setup a continuous integration server like David M suggested so that the broken build is discovered as soon as possibly and automatically.
I usually always do a Get Latest before, then build. If build is good then I check in my code.
Here is what I have been doing. I have used ClearCase and CVS in the past for source control, and most recently I have been using Subversion and Visual Studio 2008 as my IDE.
Make my code changes and build on the local machine.
Make sure they do, in fact, fix the bug in question.
Run an SVN update on the local machine and repeat steps 1 and 2.
Run through the automated unit tests to verify that they pass.
If an automated smoke test is available, which automatically tests a lot of the system's capabilities, run it. Verify that the results are correct.
Then go to the build machine and run the build script.
If the project's configuration has changed, this could definitely break a build. Perform an SVN update on the build machine, whether the build script does that or not. Open the build machine's copy of the IDE, and do a complete rebuild. This will show you whether the build box has any problems that you have taken care of on your machine but not on the build box.
The suggestions to keep separate branches for each issue are also very good, if you can keep track of all of the issues you are working on.
First, use multiple working copies (a.k.a sandboxes) - one per issue. So, if you've been working on some complex feature for a while, and you need to deal with a quick bug fix on the same project, check out a new clean working copy and do the bug fix there. With independent working copies for each issue there is no confusion about which changes to commit from the working copy to the reposistory.
Second, before committing changes, always perform the following three steps:
Buld the software.
Run a smoke test (does it start and run without crashing).
Inspect the changes you're checking in by diffing your changes against the baseline.
These should be repeated after any merge operations (e.g. after an SVN update).
At my workplace, the safety net for this is peer review. That is, get someone else to build, run, and reproduce your solution on their machine, on their view.
I cannot recommend this enough. It has caught so many omissions, would-be problems, and other accidental pieces of junk to make it a valuable part of the process. Not to mention that the mere knowledge that you have to place your work in front of someone else before having it go on to the main branch means that you raise your own quality standards.
In the past I have used branching in Clear Case to help with this issue. The process I used is below. I've never used SorceDepot so I do not know how this can be adapted to work with it.
Create a branch for the bug fix
Code all changes on the branch
Code Review
Merge to stable branch in a different view (the different view is important)
BEFORE checking in: compile, test, and run
Check in code to stable branch
By creating the branch and then merging the changes to a different view (I use Merge Manager to do the merge) any files that were not included or checked in immediately cause issues. This way everything gets tested as it will be when checked in on the stable branch.
The best thing to avoid your problems, is to use hooks, that are provided in most SCMs (they are for sure in SVN and Mercurial, and I believe they must be in other advanced SCMs). Attach unit tests to the hook and make it run every time someone checks code in - exactly before it is checked in. This way you will achieve two things:
code in SCM repo will always pass the tests,
you won't make most simple mistakes, because they should be easily detectable, if you have decent test suite.
I like having Tortoise plugins for Windows Explorer. The file icons are all badged with committed, modified or not added icons making it very easy to see what status the files are in. I also enable the meta data for Modified so I can sort changed files in the list (Details) view, where they bubble to the top so I can see them.
I bet there is a Tortoise* plugin for your SCM, I saw one for Mercurial and SVN (and CVS, ugh). I really wish Mac OS X's Finder would accept plugins like Tortoise, its so much easier than having to pop open a dedicated app most of the time.
Get someone else to go through "every" change "before" you check in the code.
I've tried using source control for a couple projects but still don't really understand it. For these projects, we've used TortoiseSVN and have only had one line of revisions. (No trunk, branch, or any of that.) If there is a recommended way to set up source control systems, what are they? What are the reasons and benifits for setting it up that way? What is the underlying differences between the workings of a centralized and distributed source control system?
Think of source control as a giant "Undo" button for your source code. Every time you check in, you're adding a point to which you can roll back. Even if you don't use branching/merging, this feature alone can be very valuable.
Additionally, by having one 'authoritative' version of the source control, it becomes much easier to back up.
Centralized vs. distributed... the difference is really that in distributed, there isn't necessarily one 'authoritative' version of the source control, although in practice people usually still do have the master tree.
The big advantage to distributed source control is two-fold:
When you use distributed source control, you have the whole source tree on your local machine. You can commit, create branches, and work pretty much as though you were all alone, and then when you're ready to push up your changes, you can promote them from your machine to the master copy. If you're working "offline" a lot, this can be a huge benefit.
You don't have to ask anybody's permission to become a distributor of the source control. If person A is running the project, but person B and C want to make changes, and share those changes with each other, it becomes much easier with distributed source control.
I recommend checking out the following from Eric Sink:
http://www.ericsink.com/scm/source_control.html
Having some sort of revision control system in place is probably the most important tool a programmer has for reviewing code changes and understanding who did what to whom. Even for single person projects, it is invaluable to be able to diff current code against previous known working version to understand what might have gone wrong due to a change.
Here are two articles that are very helpful for understanding the basics. Beyond being informative, Sink's company sells a great source control product called Vault that is free for single users (I am not affiliated in any way with that company).
http://www.ericsink.com/scm/source_control.html
http://betterexplained.com/articles/a-visual-guide-to-version-control/
Vault info at www.vault.com.
Even if you don't branch, you may find it useful to use tags to mark releases.
Imagine that you rolled out a new version of your software yesterday and have started making major changes for the next version. A user calls you to report a serious bug in yesterday's release. You can't just fix it and copy over the changes from your development trunk because the changes you've just made the whole thing unstable.
If you had tagged the release, you could check out a working copy of it and use it to fix the bug.
Then, you might choose to create a branch at the tag and check the bug fix into it. That way, you can fix more bugs on that release while you continue to upgrade the trunk. You can also merge those fixes into the trunk so that they'll be present in the next release.
The common standard for setting up Subversion is to have three folders under the root of your repository: trunk, branches and tags. The trunk folder holds your current "main" line of development. For many shops and situations, this is all they ever use... just a single working repository of code.
The tags folder takes it one step further and allows you to "checkpoint" your code at certain points in time. For example, when you release a new build or sometimes even when you simply make a new build, you "tag" a copy into this folder. This just allows you to know exactly what your code looked like at that point in time.
The branches folder holds different kinds of branches that you might need in special situations. Sometimes a branch is a place to work on experimental feature or features that might take a long time to get stable (therefore you don't want to introduce them into your main line just yet). Other times, a branch might represent the "production" copy of your code which can be edited and deployed independently from your main line of code which contains changes intended for a future release.
Anyway, this is just one aspect of how to set up your system, but I think giving some thought to this structure is important.