At my work I currently have my development environment inside a Virtual Machine. When I need to do work from home I copy my VM and any databases I need onto a laptop drive sized external USB drive. After about 10 minutes of copying I put the drive in my pocket and head home, copy back the VM and databases onto my personal computer and I'm ready to work. I follow the same steps to take the work back with me.
So if I count the total amount of time I spend waiting around for files to finish copying in order for me to take work home and bring it back again, it comes to around 40 minutes! I do have a VPN connection to my work from home (providing the internet is up at both sites) and a decent internet speed (8mbits down/?up) but I find Remote Desktoping into my work machine laggy enough for me to want to work on my VM directly.
So in looking at what other options I have or how I could improve my existing option I'm interested in what strategy you use or recommend to do work at home and keeping your code/environment in sync.
EDIT: I'd prefer an option where I don't have to commit my changes into version control before I leave work - as I like to make meaningful descriptive comments in my commits, committing would take longer than just copying my VM onto a portable drive! lol Also I'd prefer a solution where my dev environment stays in sync too. Having said that I'm still very interested in your own solutions even if they don't exactly solve my problem as best as I'd like. :)
A Distributed / Decentralized Version Control System solution will suit your needs, Git, Bazaar, Mercurial, darcs... you have plenty alternatives.
Use a version control software like SVN, SourceOffSite, etc. You just have to check-in all your changes and get the latest changes when you want to sync.
Or you can use Windows Live Sync -> https://sync.live.com/foldersharetolivesync.aspx
Hasn't anyone recommended rsync? Use an rsync client to send the diff between files. You can apply these diffs thus bringing your file up-to-date. For the smallest file transfer it's probably the best idea.
I simply use an external portable notebook drive and do all my work on that. All my PCs have it set to the same drive letter. So no copying anything .. I've not attempted to run VMs this way, however, but I don't see any reason it shouldn't simply work.
i use dropbox.
We use Citrix and then I do a remote desktop connection to my PC at work. It is not the fastest solution in the world, but it does eliminate the problem of keeping two or more workstations up-to-date.
Here is a solution I use.
Set up a VPN between the office network and the laptop.
Install the VisualSVN Server
Load all projects in the SCC.
When at the office I check out a project, work on it and then check it in. When at home or around the world I connect to the office via VPN, check out my project, do my thing then check it in. Via the VPN connection I can also RDP to my dev boxes and or servers.
Hope this helps. Good luck!
I either connect remotely to the office SVN, or VPN in and remote desktop my dev or desktop machine and carry on working. It's very rare I sync any files, but when I do it's usually with DropBox (although you can't really do that with large files).
Write program, that will syncronize all your data through internet, and then shutwodn your computer, so at the end of the day you launch it, and go home, and when you come home all data is already there
We work with a distributed team, so it is vital everyone has easy and secure code repository access. For this, we use SVN over ssl/https. It works great, reliably and secure.
Depending on the VM software you are using why don't you set up 2 different VM disks, keep your user profile/dev files on one disk and the OS and other programs that change rarely on the other.
This way you can probably get away with only having to copy the larger disk image when you've installed something new and end up only copying a single virtual disk containing your work.
Just setup a SVN server at home, forward your router port and get on with your life. rsync is also a good, fast solution. Just remember to use it over SSH.
I had a similar problem. But fortunately we had a source control server (TFS) configured so I use to work only from the local Virtual Machines stored on my external drive and than check in the required files to the TFS as an when required.
you haven't specified the OS and virtualization system, but if you're working VM images that can be mounted, e.g. XEN on linux, then you could mount the image and sync it via rsync.
i connecting to the office net work and download the lates version form svn
use the Dev mysql server
so i am just like anther computer in the office network
I imagine that most of the time spent copying involves the database. Is that right? If so, can you not simply connect to your work DB from home using your VPN connection?
You would still copy your source files (or use a source code control system as others have suggested), but this would only take a fraction of the time.
If all you need is a virtual machine from your work computer, then you could mount a remote catalog (using nfs or smb) where is your virtual machine files store and run that virtual machine from there. This should be faster than using remote desktop.
I also use DropBox, and that is key because it is important to keep it simple.
It is generally better if you can have some type of remote desktop ability, because this will allow you to use a standard workstation configuration, and it will allow for consistent connection to network resources (database server, business servers like workflow, etc).
Working offline, in my opinion, is ok for certain tasks, but overall there are obstacles for systems which connect to other resources (unless you plan to move those resources to your home box).
It was a problem for me too. So, the company bought me a laptop, and I do my work on it, at home or anywhere else.
I have a set up where a folder on one machine is synced to a folder on another machine. any changes to the contents on one machine is also made on the other machine within a minute.
So you could sync the top level folder of your work files, and have then sync to your home machine. What I like about this is that syncing is completely transparent. As far as the user experience goes, I'm simply using the file system. No external app to interact with.
I use Live Sync Live Sync from Microsoft to this. You'll need to create a Windows Live ID to use this system. It works for windows and macs.
Dropbox and Microsoft's Live Sync are good options that have already been mentioned. My personal favorite is Live Mesh, also from Microsoft. The one great feature that puts it above the other two, in my mind, is the ability to specify which folders get synched on which computers, and where the folders are located. So, for example, I synch my Visual Studio 2005/Projects folder between my work machine and my dev box at home, and I synch Visual Studio 2008/Projects between my side gig VM and my home dev box.
i have a macbook with all my dev software on it; when i go to work, i start it in target firewire mode and plug it into my work macpro with the fast processor, lan connection, big monitor, etc. this way i never have to leave my user folder but i have access to all the software and hardware available at work.
Why don't you just use version control? A DVCS?
Find here a tutorial on DVCS for Windows users (very simple)
http://codicesoftware.blogspot.com/2010/03/distributed-development-for-windows.html
Some ideas:
Use network storage (with SSD cache if speed is a concern), either for your code or to host your VM.
Separate data and OS into two virtual disks in your VM.
Google drive, Onedrive, Dropbox etc.
If you use Visual Studio (Code), try the Live Share extension.
Dockerize your environment. Alternatively, I keep a bash script for all the setup I did, so I could almost one-click reinstall my dev environment anywhere.
Use a second version control, covering your whole work directory. Commit and push everything before switching environments, then pull and hard reset your commit in another machine.
Related
This is my current work-flow:
I have a web-server on my development machine (on the same network). It houses my project & I use Notepad++ to make live-edits to the code. I make code edits from my laptop, refresh the page (which I am accessing thru hostname on my laptop) to see my PHP/HTML edits & when I'm satisfied, I merge to the master branch on GitHub.
In an effort to become more familiar with IDEs for PHP, and have some great debugging capabilities, I want to start using PhpStorm.
I thought of moving the web-server & GitHub Desktop to my laptop and just leaving the databases on the development machine, but that creates other issues.
My work-flow might not be modern. Could you help me understand how a new & similar work-flow could potentially be setup with PhpStorm in the mix? How have you seen it done?
I'm using Laravel which has a ton of files, so constant full-syncs instead of deltas would be too much time wasted.
I have two system, one in my office and one in my home. I am working on one Java application. I am facing one problem which is, after completing work in office I need to do it at home. For this before closing the eclipse, I copy the complete project in pendrive then I copy it into my home system, and then able to work from home and able to start from the place where I left the program in office. Same task I need to do, now from home to office.
Is there any eclipse plug-in or any other way available by which I will able to synchronize both the workbench.
There are some plug-in avilable like SVN, CVS but these plugin require one server, static IP address etc which is costly.
Example:- Google Drive
if you install google drive on two different system with same google account and if you do any change in one system then this change will reflect on other system also.
Edited:If you are using a personal computer at work or if the office computer allows it, you can use Dropbox.Create the project in Dropbox and then when at work,all you need to do is import the project (do not copy into workspace).What ever changes you make is persisted in Dropbox.
It sounds like what you need is a version control system, and one that is available as a free service. This allows you to store the code on an external server and have it reachable both from work and home.
Git is very popular these days for good reasons. It has a good Eclipse plugin, Egit, that comes preinstalled in later Eclipse releases. There are several external repositories that you can use, see this question, or just Google. Many offer free hosting for small projects.
This will require a bit of a learning curve, but it will help you greatly.
I use a small (pocket size) external drive. I have eclipse and my workspace on it (and other tools I need) - I can easily plug it into my work or home PC (or client PC if traveling). It works great - just assign it the same drive letter on both home and work PC.
I would also recommend you use a code repository in addition to an external drive to store the source code - CVS, SVN, Git, etc.
I'm just getting into the practice of version control (I'd like to use Eclipse and SVN), and I'm not sure the best setup for my scenario.
I'm currently a lone developer and I have two computers (a work desktop and a home office laptop) that I like to use for development (mainly web-based stuff). I have access to a Linux-based and a Windows-based remote server, and I seem to always have files scattered between the two machines based on where I conduct the work.
Are there any instructions or best practices about how to set up a development environment so that when I sit down at either machine I have the same files to work with and the ability to utilize version control?
Some things I have used between my laptop/workstation/server.
If the paths are exposed create a local svn repository, and then use the network path to the repo from the second machine. Works well if you dont want to run a server but just use local files. My laptop and workstation have the same credentials, so pass through works great with the hidden paths '\machine\c$\etc'
I also like to use Unison for managing the files between my laptop and workstation. Its not versioning, and with date time hints it does rather well at 'which is newer'. Also, if you're the only one using both, conflicts are really low. I use this to manage my 'my documents' http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/
Of course you can create an SVN server, and I have found Visual SVN to make this almost too easy. I started using this for my personal projects after the need to 'launch' to the server came up. Having the svn server on the remote server had a few benefits when it came to launching and working from home. (Or inviting other developers) http://visualsvn.com/server/
Just install SVN on one of your computers (preferably on the Linux server). I guess administrators will install SVN for you and create needed repositories.
Integration of SVN with Eclipse is really easy through plugin.
If you are new to source control (or even if you are not), reading Eric Sink's Source Code HOWTO will give a good introduction and expose you to some best practices.
I would consider a distributed version control system as well as Subversion. Even if you do go with Subversion in the end, it's good to understand all the options available to you. Personally, I'm a single developer and work in multiple locations, and have found the DVCS concept to work much better than SVN.
Git, Mercurial and Bazaar are three options. Here's a good video by Linux Torvalds which explains some of the conceptual differences.
I am implementing Bazaar as my source control solution for handling this scenario. I have used Subversion for years, but it simply does not really fit this distributed usage scenario. Bazaar does.
I'm just learning how to do things, and want to start using some sort of version control for a web app.
What's most appropriate for deploying a python or php web app on my own? I'm using linux and have a linux server.
Thanks!
SVN, but you need to be able to easily deploy your webapp with SVN.
Since it is not always a simple task, so I just point out this article which may be of interest for your project.
General principle:
Configure Apache on your development server so that it picks up your checked out working copies as separate subdomains. Using this, you can simply make a checkout of your project and it will automagically be up and running. No need to touch the Apache configuration. You need a DNS wildcard entry so that all subdomains of dev.example.org go to your development server.
The only problem with using the above Apache configuration locally is the DNS wildcard. Unless your desktop is assigned a hostname by your network's DNS server and you can set the wildcard there, you will have to make do with your localhost address. You can install dnsmasq to act as a local caching DNS server and put the wildcard on your own machine
Use dnsmasq so you can achieve the same effect on your own development machine. That way you can develop your web applications locally and you won't need a central development server. In my examples I will be assuming you use subversion for your version control, but it works virtually the same with other version control packages, such as git or bazaar.
Note: (Humor)
This other question on Subversion allowed me to point out to this article about publishing its (source-controlled) data into production, with in it probably the ugliest diagram I ever saw on the topic ;-)
If I had not bumped into git, I would've doubtless gone with SVN. Having said that, I would recommend git.
Nowadays, I would certainly go with a distributed version control system. Setup is faster since you don't need to set up a version control server and everything, all you usually need to do is initialize a certain directory within your development box for version control and you're good to go. They also seem like the way to go these days. If it were 2001, I would recommend a centralized system like Subversion. But it's 2008, everyone is moving to distributed systems and user interfaces and supporting tools tend to get better.
Here are some suggestions for you:
Darcs: Easy to learn and has all the features you will usually need
Mercurial
Git: Powerful. May take some time to understand but evolves rapidly
All three of them should be readily available in your Linux-based OS through the usual package management solutions.
SVN is great.
Nowadays the hype around DVCS.
I prefer Bazaar.
Because of it's name, the support, the feature set, and it works well on my window$ machine too.
I'm using unfuddle.com and I love it. It's free for a one person web app
The answer really depends on your way of thinking. I personally had problems switching to subversion from SourceSafe. If you come from microsoft shop, I'd suggest using SourceGear Vault, it is free for <=2 users. If you come from non microsoft area, then using subversion would be preferrable. Also please consider git if working on linux.
HTH, Valve.
Personally I use monotone, learning a DVCS is definitely the way forward.
For a one-man job, pretty much any revision control system will do the job. It's when you get into multiple people, and past that into multiple repositories, where there start to be differences.
Given that, I'd go with whatever Free Software system your development environment supports best. I see Subversion and Git mentioned and both are fine choices.
SVN would been my first choice. If I have to take a second choice I would go to CVS.
One of the most popular models out there today is Subversion. It's generally easy to setup & configure and is able to handle multiple platforms.
SVN. If one does not need concurrent access (which is your case), it is VERY easy to setup as no server is required at all. Definitely your weapon of choice.
I wholeheartedly agree with SVN. Command-line SVN is quite easy too.
While I like svn a lot, I've found mercurial handy for having the whole repository locally. (the same goes for git, but its interface is a little less polished in my opinion.)
I'm not able to answer the question as asked, because I don't develop on a Linux server.
But maybe this experience has a counterpart in Linux world.
I use a local-on-my-LAN-only IIS server (actually on an old laptop that no longer travels but works as a little server). I have VSS installed on that server too. There is an integration between the IIS Server, the FrontPage extensions on that server, and the VSS.
The upshot is that I can use FrontPage to build and edit my site and build a development image that is always backed up in VSS, and I can check out, check in, and do all of that from within FrontPage.
Now, the way I publish is I take advantage of the sharing capability of VSS so I have a deployment image that shares with the project that is actually an IIS web site. I have a deployment-image directory that I can transfer the latest checked-in material to (material that has not changed is not updated). I then deploy the deployment image to the hosted, public web site using FTP (again, only transfering new and updated files).
I present all of these details to suggest what might be the use-case of interest, even though a different solution approach is needed with Linux.
If I wasn't using a tool that integrated with the web server and also the source control at the server, I could do something similar by checking the VSS material in and out of a local directory and then pushing the updated VSS project to the IIS server web-pages directory hierarchy. The workflow is a little more clumsy. In this case, I would not edit pages directly on the development web server unless I could lock check-in pages as read-only or something.
Does this suggest anything that might be appealing in the Linux server case?
Definitively Mercurial is a good choice, quick, easy to use, perfect for working alone, or with multiple other developer, perfectly multiplateform, handles merges, branches, etc. very simply, plugin based, there are great tools out there such as nice IDE plugins (notably Netbeans and Eclipse).
Robust, it works just as you a expect such a tool to work, not like SVN (and I have years of day to day)...
Both Sun, Xen and Mozilla host all their repos on Mercurial. We're currently moving from SVN to Mercurial after a 6 month daily test, without any regret.
I once used Perforce and was impressed with it. There's GUI and command line versions and it supports Windows, Linux, Mac and Unix for both the server and client. It integrates with Eclipse and has APIs for writing your own client applications (C/C++, Ruby, Perl, Python) It only supports two users and five workspaces before you need to buy licenses though (but that is within the scope of this question).
Subversion is a good choice. For the client, there's TortoiseSVN (http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/) that integrates with the shell and lets you do things with a right click on a folder. For integration with Visual Studio (I'll assume that's your environment) there's VisualSVN (http://www.visualsvn.com/) and AnhkSVN (http://ankhsvn.open.collab.net/). For the server there's a one-click installer you can find here (http://svn1clicksetup.tigris.org/) that does the setup in a snap. VisualSVN also has a (free) server that you can use which provides it's own web access and security (rather than using apache) and has a mmc-snapin for managing/creating repositories and users.
CVS - No, I'm not joking. Not that it is better (it is not) or the simplest (it isn't), but it really doesn't matter at the end of the day. The important thing is to get started with ANY version control system even if it is a one-developer shop, even if it is CVS.
What's the recommended source control system for a very small team (one developer)?
Price does not matter. Customer would pay :-)
I'm working on Vista32 with VS 2008 in C++ and later in C# and with WPF. Setting up an extra (physical) server for this seems overkill to me. Any opinions?
I would use Subversion (in fact I use it) [update: Jul 2014 -- I use Git -- see end of the answer].
SVN is:
free,
good enough (see disadvantages below),
simple,
works fine on Windows (and Linux too),
a lot of people use it so it's easy to get help,
can integrate with most of IDEs i.e. Visual Studio (i.e. ankhsvn or VisualSVN -- more info) or Eclipse (i.e. Subclipse -- here someone asked about that).
I would strongly recommended separate machine to source control server. At best somewhere on the cloud. Advantages:
You don't lost your source control repositories if your development box dies.
You don't have to worry about maintenance of one more box.
There are companies which host SVN repositories.
Here are links to SVN (client and server) packages for various operating systems.
Disadvantages of SVN
I am using SVN on Windows machine for about 5 years and found that SVN has a few disadvantages :).
It is slow on large repositories
SVN (or its client -- TortoiseSVN) has one big disadvantage -- it terrible slow (while updating or committing) on large (thousands of files) repositories unless you have SSD drive.
Merging can be difficult
Many people complain about how hard merging is with SVN.
I do merging for about 4 years (including about 2 years in CVS -- that was terrible, but doable) and about 2 years with SVN.
And personally I don't find it hard -- on the other hand -- any merge is easy after merging branches in CVS :).
I do merge of large repository (two repositories in fact) once a week and rarely I have conflicts which are hard to solve (most of conflicts are solved automatically with diff software which I use).
However in case of project of a few developers merging should not be problem at all if you keep a few simple rules:
merge changes often,
avoid active development in various branches simultaneously.
Added in July 2011
Many devs recommended Distributed Version Control like Git or Mercurial.
From single developer perspective there are only a few important advantages of DVCS over SVN:
DVCS can be faster.
You can commit to local repository without access to central one.
DVCS is hot thing and fancy to use/learn (if someone pay for your learning).
And I don't think merging is a problem in case of single developer.
Joel Spolsky wrote tutorial about Mercurial which is definitively worth to read.
So, despite of many advantages of DVCS I would stay with SVN if merging or speed is not a problem.
Or try Mercurial, which according to this and this SO questions, is better supported (in July 2011) on Windows.
Added in July 2014
For about a year I use Git (Git Bash mainly) for my pet-projects (i.e. solving Euler problems) and local branches for each Euler problem are really nice feature -- exactly as it is described as advantage of DVCS.
Today Git tooling on Windows is much, much better then 2 or more years ago.
You can use remote repo (like GitHub or ProjectLocker and many others) to keep
copy of your project away from your workstation with no extra effort/money.
However I use GUI client only to looks at diffs (and sometimes to choose files to commit),
so it's better to not afraid of command line -- it's really nice.
So as of today I would go with Git.
I would also recommend Mercurial. It's command set is much like the one found in Subversion, so the learning curve is not that steep. As mentioned earlier, it's designed to run locally, but it's also easy to share/merge changes across computers, or even just push it to a remote server for backups.
It offers excellent tools, like TortoiseHG, and it has good plugins for NetBeans and Eclipse. It also runs natively on Win32, as it's written in Python.
If you don't want to set up a server yourself (for backups, e.g.), there are free hosting providers available; there's a comprehensive list on The Mercurial Wiki.
I would definitely recommend git
Works great for both big and small teams. Only drawback is poor native windows support. Although it works fine for me in Cygwin. There also exists a native windows port.
Some of its benefits:
Excellent support for a non-linear work flow. Its branching and merging is far better than eg Subversion.
Good tools to navigate your repository
Handles large projects well.
It is not possible to modify the history without changing the cryptographic signature of your repository
With its non monolithic design, it is easy to script.
Some people find that it has a steep learning curve. But once you understand it you can do almost anything you would want with it.
Go for subversion and tortoiseSVN, you don't need to set it up on a server.
Costs are zero
The subversion documentation is great and fun to read
tortoiseSVN is a very convenient client
Subversion has very low barrier to entry.
TortoiseSVN is a free client, and integrates into your explorer- i.e. in right mouse click menu.
The repository can be just a directory somewhere on your PC or on a network drive. Backing up just means zipping up this directory
There are a few plugins to Visual studio for Subversion, AnkSvn is one I have used, it is free and integrates nicely (i.e it will be smart about moving and deleting files etc)
Subversion is a good choice for one developer.
Update:
Since this post, I've been using Mercurial. It is a Distributed SVN. The 'distributed' aspect may not be directly useful to a sole developer, however it is better at merging and is somewhat faster. There is also a free and good Windows Explorer extension client - Tortoise Hg.
So in summary, if you are the sort of person who will work on many branches at once (doing spikes etc) or if you work on multiple PCs at once and would like full offline access to checkin history on both, then Mercurial. If you just want simple tracking and a well proven and easy to understand solution, then Subversion.
Sourcegear's Vault is a great option, it runs on SqlServer and it has been around for many years. I would not use any version of VSS (Visual Source Safe).
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Perforce. It's free for 2 people, blazingly fast, and integrates with VS. Also source server has bindings for it by default.
In addition to source control, it really is worthwhile to complete the loop and setup a symbol server and a source server, so that you have simple debugging of anything you've shipped (e.g. no more searching for pdbs or source that match the binary). Both source and symbol server are completely free and supported in VS since 2005.
You can use Vault from SourceGear, the replacement tool for visual studio source safe.
The IDE is integrated in Visual Studio.
The tool is free for single user.
More information: http://www.sourcegear.com/vault/index.html
I use Mercurial. It runs a treat running stand alone on my Vista development system with no other dependencies required. I use the command line but there's also TortoiseHG to integrate with Explorer.
Two comments:
There are other tools which probably integrate with VS better. I think Subversion has nice VS plug ins.
The benefit of a separate server is that it's a nice backup of all your work in case your HDD dies on you etc. so discount having one.
Edit: #Slartibartfast - if you just want to run source code control on a single machine a Distributed Source Code Control tool like git or Mercurial is ideal since they're designed to run complete repositories on a machine without the overhead of a server. The fact that you never connect your repository to anyone else's to push and pull changes doesn't mean that tool won't be right.
There are two possible solutions for your problem: centralized VCS or Distributed VCS (DVCS).
Centralized VCS like Subversion would satisfy you feature for committing and browsing the log. It also enables you to safely store your repository to another computer which should be one of your major goals as hard drive failure is always a possibility. However, using Subversion the history still resides only at the central location making it vulnerable and you stated that you do not want to have another server.
Distributed Version Control Systems (DVCS) such as Mercurial and Git enable you to do more complex operations on your repository. With both of those tools the whole repository resides with the same computer making it bit easier to make backups and using the repository with another computer e.g. laptop. While Mercurial might seem complex at first the operations you would use with subversion are pretty much the same with Mercurial. Therefore there is no extra overhead to get started if you already know Subversion and you can easily use more advanced features of Mercurial later.
You should be able to find online repository service for your Mercurial repository enabling you to make easy backups and do collaboration some day if you have the need for it.
My recommendation is Mercurial with TortoiseHg.
A source control system doesn't care if there's only one developer involved :)
I would recommend that you use a source control system that you've used before and liked.
If you like vs 2008 integration of the source control system however I would go with TFS although I never had the experience to set it up but it shouldn't be so hard.
Another possibility is to use svn (you'll find some servers on google) and use Tortoisesvn that integrates into the windows shell and is nice to work with.
A number of the posts advocate putting the repository on a server because it provides redundancy. I don't think this is all that helpful for a single user. Using a separate server machine adds a lot of complexity, but it doesn't buy much redundancy: if you lose the server machine, you still have the current sources on your development machine, but you may have lost ALL your history. Putting the repository on a server does make sense if that server is being regularly backed up. Using an exernal hosting service for the repository can provide storage redundancy, but you're at the mercy of the external service AND you need an internet connection to access the repository. If you use an external host, make frequent backups of the repository that you keep control of!
I would presonally recommend TortoiseSVN using a local file based repository. Just make sure you backup the local repository to a second machine or external media (such as CD-ROMs) on a regular basis.
I'd recommend two things:
First up, that other server - what happens if your machine dies? the house burns down? etc. Having it on another machine is a good idea from a redundancy point of view.
The second one is WHAT:
If you are very familiar with visual source(un)safe, think about SourceGearVault. It's VERY nice, very fast, and very much a vastly improved "clone" of VSS (ie works the same way from the users POV, not under the hood). Needs SQL server and windows tho (it's .NET + SQL server). Free for 1 user.
Of you are not, then I suggest you do one of two things:
First, get VisualSVN. It's great, works with VS2008 really well.
Second, if you MUST run it locally, get VisualSVN server (free!). Make sure you have a good backup plan. Runs on XP/2003/2008/Vista etc.It's just Apache + SVN, under the hood, so it just saves you on the setup - took me 5 mins to install and have it running.
OR, and I prefer this one:
go somewhere like Unfuddle, Dreamhost etc, and get hosting for SVN. It's private, it's fast, and most of all - it's OFFSITE. My dreamhsot account, with something crazy like 500GB of storage and 1-2TB of transfer/month costs about $6/month! There are others which do SVN hosting + bug tracking etc. Look around.
But yeah - SVN is the schizzzznit.you could create a local repository, but I like having a remote, backed up server.
TFS is total, utter overkill for 1 developer (or <5 IMO)
I realize that cost isn't a problem but a nice free solution that wouldn't involve checking in and out would be to host the code within Dropbox by doing this you'd instantly get versioning and backup which are the main features that a single developer system would provide.
Bazaar is a good version control system. I like to use it for my linux configs because you don't need to create a separate repo.
A while back I did a how-to blog post on using SVN with only one developer.
I called it Single serving source control
Well, for start, you don't need distributed one :)
I'm not sure what this physical part means, because you could put svn server on your own machine in little trouble.
On the other hand, NetBeans have local history module that logs all local changes of a file. Maybe something like that would be enough for you if Visual Studio have something similar.
I would recommend Subversion since it's for single developer and I assume that you're not doing complex merging and lots of log/history checking.
Seems like many people are using http://svnrepository.com/ for their hosting. It comes with Trac and even Git if you need it later.
Some good answers here.
I want to re-iterate the suggestion to use a separate computer to host the source control server, although it doesn't have to be a dedicated machine. It could be your Windows Home Server box, or some other server you're already running. Or it could be a virtual machine hosted on some other server. Whatever, just make it separate from the machine(s) where you write code.
I also want to suggest that you get a good backup discipline for your server. Something nightly at least; hourly if you can. Back up to a dedicated device (like an external hard drive) or something offsite (a server in your cousin's house in another state) or in the cloud (Amazon S3). Remember that your source code is your key asset; take care of it!
I've been working with Bazaar now for a few weeks and really like it. I'm a linux developer so don't really know much about Tortois but if you like it you should know that there is a Tortoisbzr
Hands down I would use git, and I believe many reasons why a single-developer would like to use git are hinted at or described in git magic
I use Springloops - version control tool for developers
SVN / Git version control
Automatic deployment to servers
Create repositories
Invite people
Import files
Great support
So, try Springloops
I dont see why the fact that your one developer changes anything on the source control issue. I would follow the same system (in fact I do on my solo projects). I use wush.net (svn and trac) in those cases. It's fast to set up and dont require that you yourself do or know any server issues. I recommend you use something like this.
I would recommend using subversion. Many have recommended using a seperate box as a server, in case your dev machine dies. What happens when the SVN server dies? The answer here is that no matter where you choose to run the server, ensure you always do frequent backups, possibly automated daily to some secondary, preferrebly offsite machine.
I use Perforce as well for my own personal stuff, mainly because we use it at work. There are emacs bindings for it as well, so you can sync, check stuff in or out, etc. all from within emacs.
I recently moved my studio from Subversion to Perforce and put some notes about it, sort of a postmortem, on my blog here. Hope it's useful.