I'm using Bazaar quite some time now, but at the moment I'm searching a solution to the following problem:
Assuming you've got several developers with everyone developing in its own branch, like this:
Project
|
|----Branch 1
|
|----Branch 2
|
...
Now, we've got a project manager who wants to have an overview over all branches.
Is there any possibility (using only bzr functions) that he can manage those branches at once?
With "manage", I mean update, commit and perhaps even checkout (last one could perhaps be done with multi-pull but I think this would overwrite existing local data)
Greetings Florian
P.S. I know that this use-case could easily be achieved with SVN (by simply using subdirectories - but without the features of a dvcs) or more or less easily with shell-scripts (something like bzr list-branches|xargs bzr update), but I'd prefer a built-in bzr function
You can see all the branches in a directory tree with:
bzr branches -R /path/to/base/dir
However this works only on the local filesystem. If you need to find branches in a remote system, you need to run the command through ssh or something.
Once you have the list of branches, the manager should branch from them into his local shared repository, preferably configured with the --no-trees option for space efficiency. Existing branches should be pulled instead (using multi-pull for example), removed branches should be removed.
Once he has the branches, the easiest way to overview is using Bazaar Explorer. Open the shared repository location. I especially like the Log button, which will show the tree of logs.
When you say commit... The manager should not commit to the developer branches. If fixes are needed it's better to ask the developer to fix it, otherwise the manager will always have to clean up their mess for them. The manager should only merge other branches to the trunk/main/master. In other words use the gatekeeper workflow.
You can try the bzr-externals plugin or the bzr-scmproj plugin.
I am looking for a 'local' source control software, I don't need it to be necessarily available on network.. Its meant to be only for personal use..
What I am looking for is something like:
Need it to be cross platform. The biggest problem is, I need the same local repository to be available on both windows and Linux! (Is this even possible? :s ) I dual boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu and have managed to setup workspace that works in both OS without changes, now I need a source control software!
Easy installation, I have never installed one before! :)
And Has eclipse plugin..
I have used VSS for this purpose before, but that is only on Windows!
I looked for Mercurial, but I am not sure if I can use the same repository on both the OS!
Any suggestions are appreciated!
UPDATE: Thanks for your replies.. Yes I do want the same repository to be accessed from different operating systems.. Everyone has suggested an on-line repository but I 'need it to be local'.. Internet is not something I can depend on (I now know git takes care of this..! :)), I would not want version of, say my personal recordings of some home functions tweaked in audacity, to be hosted on-line! Right now, I am trying out git, as a local repository solution..
If you definitely want a repository that's always available on a local filesystem, I'd probably go for Mercurial or Git. Most likely Mercurial, as it has the best windows support (including the TortoiseHg gui), but Git works similarly.
But there's two other issues:
Do you make frequent backups?
What file system type will you use for the shared repository?
In this particular case, I would not trust a single shared filesystem as the best basket to put your eggs in; In each boot environment, I would maintain working repositories separate from the shared one. This would give you some redundancy.
Here's how this would work:
Two repositories U and W, for Ubuntu and Windows respectively, and one shared repository S, accessable frome either boot environment.
Assuming a stable situation, with all three repositories in sync:
Commit any new code to repository U in Ubuntu.
$ hg commit -m 'changes from linux'
Push the changes to S.
$ hg push
Reboot into windows.
...
Pull the latest changesets from S into W
W> hg fetch
Update your code, commit frequently
Push prior to rebooting into linux
W> hg push
Reboot
And repeat step 4, but now from linux
$ hg fetch # performs an hg pull, followed by an update.
Rinse, lather, repeat.
That's said, with both Mercurial and Git, you can synchronise your repositories across the net any time, so I would surely recommend you try that out some time.
And note: the best backup is having a copy of your data on a live file system on another computer, preferably at another location.
I'm pretty sure you can Mercurial, since the whole repository is in .hg folder.
Try TortoiseHG - it's easy to install and use.
Why do you want it to be local? The benefit of source control, is that you can have multiple clients working on the same source, without worrying too much about conflicts etc.
Even though it doesn't really answer your question, this advices might solve your problem:
Just create a project for yourself at https://github.com/ or http://sourceforge.net/ any other free online repository hosting provider. SVN, CVS, GIT all come with excellent IDE integration and clients run on almost all operating systems.
Hope this helps. Regards.
Do you really want to have a duplicate repository on different operating systems? That doesn't make sense to me. What would be the purpose of doing that?
I think you instead want to have a single repository that you can access from any operating system.
In this case, you can just install Subversion (or whatever source control system you prefer) on a server and access it from the operating systems you use. There are plenty of client tools for Mac/Windows/Linux that can talk to subversion repositories, RapidSVN being free and cross-platform for one.
If you don't have your own server, there are plenty of places online that will host Subversion for you.
Hi
I'm currently seeing a need for handling source code for a few projects I'm working on. I have no need for external hosting, but I do need to have a structure internal in my development environment.
So, how would you guys recommend to handle this? To you just place the files on a file share in your environment, or do you set up some kind of versioning systems? I'm quite new to this, but I would like to have some way of getting back to old versions of my code, I would like to have the source code centrally stored so I can reach if from bothmy laptop and workstation.
/Andy.l
Use a source control management system - I would suggest using a distributed one such as Git or Mercurial, so you don't need a server or need to be online to work.
You can still have a central location where you push and pull stuff from if you really want to.
If you must have a server, go with SVN - it is easy to setup and widely used.
With all of these options, there are hosted services that you can use as a central store.
If you are using windows OS, then Visual SVN is quite good. You can install it on the server and use a client like Tortoise SVN to connect to it from other machines. The basic version is free to use.
Definitely use a version control system, it will allow you to do some nice workflows on your coding day and have all securely stored. There are several good free vcs (git, mercurial, subversion, etc). For Some time I used a combination of git + dropbox or sugar sync to back up and share my repos
http://git-scm.com/
Do setup a source control repository. Using a SCM, has nothing but benefits.
With respect of what SCM system to chose, to very simple repositories to setup and learn are Mercurial (distributed), and Subversion (centralized). I know you said you wanted centralized access to your sources, but keep in mind that that doesn't meant you can't use Mercurial for that purpose.
Here's a great tutorial on Mercurial by Joel Spolsky.
Lots of choices based on environment, etc.
SVN is an excellent all-around choice for centralized source control. You can also use Mercurial and Git internally if you prefer DVCS (even in a local environment).
In any case, regardless of what version control system you have - get one. Even if it's just one developer doing personal projects, source control is a must.
There's no question that setting up a SCM makes sense and has only advantages. Which SCM to use depends on several circumstances:
Do your co-workers already know any SCM? We're using SVN and I think it would be quite hard to teach my colleagues the concepts of a DVCS like git
In my opinion, using a DVCS like git needs more discipline during work: you have to remember to push to the central repository.
But this is also an advantage: you can create your own development branches and work on them without publishing them to the rest of your colleagues (saves reputation in some cases :-))
If you or your co-workers often work from remote, using a DVCS is more comfortable than using a centralized one like SVN: you need no connection to your central repository but can still checkin, create branches and (quite important) view the complete history of your project without connecting (e.g. via VPN) to your servers at work.
For a centralized VCS, I can recommend SVN (setup as Hps supposed)
As DVCS I can recommend Git (msysgit with tortoisegit)
If you decide to use SVN, you can still use git-svn on the clients: the repository is being run with SVN, but anyhow, you get the advantages of a DVCS while being offline.
So I get that most of you are frowning at me for not currently using any source control. I want to, I really do, now that I've spent some time reading the questions / answers here. I am a hobby programmer and really don't do much more than tinker, but I've been bitten a couple of times now not having the 'time machine' handy...
I still have to decide which product I'll go with, but that's not relevant to this question.
I'm really struggling with the flow of files under source control, so much so I'm not even sure how to pose the question sensibly.
Currently I have a directory hierarchy where all my PHP files live in a Linux Environment. I edit them there and can hit refresh on my browser to see what happens.
As I understand it, my files now live in a different place. When I want to edit, I check it out and edit away. But what is my substitute for F5? How do I test it? Do I have to check it back in, then hit F5? I admit to a good bit of trial and error in my work. I suspect I'm going to get tired of checking in and out real quick for the frequent small changes I tend to make. I have to be missing something, right?
Can anyone step me through where everything lives and how I test along the way, while keeping true to the goal of having a 'time machine' handy?
Eric Sink has a great series of posts on source control basics. His company (Sourcegear) makes a source control tool called Vault, but the how-to is generally pretty system agnostic.
Don't edit your code on production.
Create a development environment, with the appropriate services (apache w/mod_php).
The application directory within your dev environment is where you do your work.
Put your current production app in there.
Commit this directory to the source control tool. (now you have populated source control with your application)
Make changes in your new development environment, hitting F5 when you want to see/test what you've changed.
Merge/Commit your changes to source control.
Actually, your files, while stored in a source repository (big word for another place on your hard drive, or a hard drive somewhere else), can also exist on your local machine, too, just where they exist now.
So, all files that aren't checked out would be marked as "read only", if you are using VSS (not sure about SVN, CVS, etc). So, you could still run your website by hitting "F5" and it will reload the files where they currently are. If you check one out and are editing it, it becomes NOT read only, and you can change it.
Regardless, the web server that you are running will load readonly/writable files with the same effect.
You still have all the files on your hard drive, ready for F5!
The difference is that you can "checkpoint" your files into the repository. Your daily life doesn't have to change at all.
You can do a "checkout" to the same directory where you currently work so that doesn't have to change. Basically your working directory doesn't need to change.
This is a wildly open ended question because how you use a SCM depends heavily on which SCM you choose. A distributed SCM like git works very differently from a centralized one like Subversion.
svn is way easier to digest for the "new user", but git can be a little more powerful and improve your workflow. Subversion also has really great docs and tool support (like trac), and an online book that you should read:
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/
It will cover the basics of source control management which will help you in some way no matter which SCM you ultimately choose, so I recommend skimming the first few chapters.
edit: Let me point out why people are frowning on you, by the way: SCM is more than simply a "backup of your code". Having "timemachine" is nothing like an SCM. With an SCM you can go back in your change history and see what you actually changed and when which is something you'll never get with blobs of code. I'm sure you've asked yourself on more than one occasion: "how did this code get here?" or "I thought I fixed that bug"-- if you did, thats why you need SCM.
You don't "have" to change your workflow in a drastic way. You could, and in some cases you should, but that's not something version control dictates.
You just use the files as you would normally. Only under version control, once you reach a certain state of "finished" or at least "working" (solved an issue in your issue tracker, finished a certain method, tweaked something, etc), you check it in.
If you have more than one developer working on your codebase, be sure to update regularly, so you're always working against a recent (merged) version of the code.
Here is the general workflow that you'd use with a non-centralized source control system like CVS or Subversion: At first you import your current project into the so-called repository, a versioned storage of all your files. Take care only to import hand-generated files (source, data files, makefiles, project files). Generated files (object files, executables, generated documentation) should not be put into the repository.
Then you have to check out your working copy. As the name implies, this is where you will do all your local edits, where you will compile and where you will point your test server at. It's basically the replacement to where you worked at before. You only need to do these steps once per project (although you could check out multiple working copies, of course.)
This is the basic work cycle: At first you check out all changes made in the repository into your local working copy. When working in a team, this would bring in any changes other team members made since your last check out. Then you do your work. When you've finished with a set of work, you should check out the current version again and resolve possible conflicts due to changes by other team members. (In a disciplined team, this is usually not a problem.) Test, and when everything works as expected you commit (check in) your changes. Then you can continue working, and once you've finished again, check out, resolve conflicts, and check in again. Please note that you should only commit changes that were tested and work. How often you check in is a matter of taste, but a general rule says that you should commit your changes at least once at the end of your day. Personally, I commit my changes much more often than that, basically whenever I made a set of related changes that pass all tests.
Great question. With source control you can still do your "F5" refresh process. But after each edit (or a few minor edits) you want to check your code in so you have a copy backed up.
Depending on the source control system, you don't have to explicitly check out the file each time. Just editing the file will check it out. I've written a visual guide to source control that many people have found useful when grokking the basics.
I would recommend a distributed version control system (mercurial, git, bazaar, darcs) rather than a centralized version control system (cvs, svn). They're much easier to setup and work with.
Try mercurial (which is the VCS that I used to understand how version control works) and then if you like you can even move to git.
There's a really nice introductory tutorial on Mercurial's homepage: Understanding Mercurial. That will introduce you to the basic concepts on VCS and how things work. It's really great. After that I suggest you move on to the Mercurial tutorials: Mercurial tutorial page, which will teach you how to actually use Mercurial. Finally, you have a free ebook that is a really great reference on how to use Mercurial: Distributed Revision Control with Mercurial
If you're feeling more adventurous and want to start off with Git straight away, then this free ebook is a great place to start: Git Magic (Very easy read)
In the end, no matter what VCS tool you choose, what you'll end up doing is the following:
Have a repository that you don't manually edit, it only for the VCS
Have a working directory, where you make your changes as usual.
Change what you like, press F5 as many times as you wish. When you like what you've done and think you would like to save the project the way it is at that very moment (much like you would do when you're, for example, writing something in Word) you can then commit your changes to the repository.
If you ever need to go back to a certain state in your project you now have the power to do so.
And that's pretty much it.
If you are using Subversion, you check out your files once . Then, whenever you have made big changes (or are going to lunch or whatever), you commit them to the server. That way you can keep your old work flow by pressing F5, but every time you commit you save a copy of all the files in their current state in your SVN-repository.
Depends on the source control system you use. For example, for subversion and cvs your files can reside in a remote location, but you always check out your own copy of them locally. This local copy (often referred to as the working copy) are just regular files on the filesystem with some meta-data to let you upload your changes back to the server.
If you are using Subversion here's a good tutorial.
Depending on the source control system, 'checkout' may mean different things. In the SVN world, it just means retrieving (could be an update, could be a new file) the latest copy from the repository. In the source-safe world, that generally means updating the existing file and locking it. The text below uses the SVN meaning:
Using PHP, what you want to do is checkout your entire project/site to a working folder on a test apache site. You should have the repository set up so this can happen with a single checkout, including any necessary sub folders. You checkout your project to set this up one time.
Now you can make your changes and hit F5 to refresh as normal. When you're happy with a set of changes to support a particular fix or feature, you can commit in as a unit (with appropriate comments, of course). This puts the latest version in the repository.
Checking out/committing one file at a time would be a hassle.
A source control system is generally a storage place for your files and their history and usually separate from the files you're currently working on. It depends a bit on the type of version control system but suppose you're using something CVS-like (like subversion), then all your files will live in two (or more) places. You have the files in your local directory, the so called "working copy" and one in the repository, which can be located in another local folder, or on another machine, usually accessed over the network. Usually, after the first import of your files into the repository you check them out under a working folder where you continue working on them. I assume that would be the folder where your PHP files now live.
Now what happens when you've checked out a copy and you made some non-trivial changes that you want to "save"? You simply commit those changes in your working copy to the version control system. Now you have a history of your changes. Should you at any point wish to go back to the version at which you committed those changes, then you can simply revert your working copy to an older revision (the name given to the set of changes that you commit at once).
Note that this is all very CVS/SVN-specific, as GIT would work slightly different. I'd recommend starting with subversion and reading the first few chapters of the very excellent SVN Book to get you started.
This is all very subjective depending on the the source control solution that you decide to use. One that you will definitely want to look into is Subversion.
You mentioned that you're doing PHP, but are you doing it in a Linux environment or Windows? It's not really important, but what I typically did when I worked in a PHP environment was to have a production branch and a development branch. This allowed me to configure a cron job (a scheduled task in Windows) for automatically pulling from the production-ready branch for the production server, while pulling from the development branch for my dev server.
Once you decide on a tool, you should really spend some time learning how it works. The concepts of checking in and checking out don't apply to all source control solutions, for example. Either way, I'd highly recommend that you pick one that permits branching. This article goes over a great (in my opinion) source control model to follow in a production environment.
Of course, I state all this having not "tinkered" in years. I've been doing professional development for some time and my techniques might be overkill for somebody in your position. Not to say that there's anything wrong with that, however.
I just want to add that the system that I think was easiest to set up and work with was Mercurial. If you work alone and not in a team you just initialize it in your normal work folder and then go on from there. The normal flow is to edit any file using your favourite editor and then to a checkin (commit).
I havn't tried GIT but I assume it is very similar. Monotone was a little bit harder to get started with. These are all distributed source control systems.
It sounds like you're asking about how to use source control to manage releases.
Here's some general guidance that's not specific to websites:
Use a local copy for developing changes
Compile (if applicable) and test your changes before checking in
Run automated builds and tests as often as possible (at least daily)
Version your daily builds (have some way of specifying the exact bits of code corresponding to a particular build and test run)
If possible, use separate branches for major releases (or have a development and a release branch)
When necessary, stabilize your code base (define a set of tests such that passing all of those tests means you are confident enough in the quality of your product to release it, then drive toward 0 test failures, i.e. ban any checkins to the release branch other than fixes for the outstanding issues)
When you have a build which has the features you want and has passed all of the necessary tests, deploy it.
If you have a small team, a stable product, a fast build, and efficient, high-quality tests then this entire process might be 100% automated and could take place in minutes.
I recommend Subversion. Setting up a repository and using it is actually fairly trivial, even from the command line. Here's how it would go:
if you haven't setup your repo (repository)
1) Make sure you've got Subversion installed on your server
$ which svn
/usr/bin/svn
which is a tool that tells you the path to another tool. if it returns nothing that tool is not installed on your system
1b) If not, get it
$ apt-get install subversion
apt-get is a tool that installs other tools onto your system
If that's not the right name for subversion in apt, try this
$ apt-cache search subversion
or this
$ apt-cache search svn
Find the right package name and install it using apt-get install packagename
2) Create a new repository on your server
$ cd /path/to/directory/of/repositories
$ svnadmin create my_repository
svnadmin create reponame creates a new repository in the present working directory (pwd) with the name reponame
You are officially done creating your repository
if you have an existing repo, or have finished setting it up
1) Make sure you've got Subversion installed on your local machine per the instructions above
2) Check out the repository to your local machine
$ cd /repos/on/your/local/machine
$ svn co svn+ssh://www.myserver.com/path/to/directory/of/repositories/my_repository
svn co is the command you use to check out a repository
3) Create your initial directory structure (optional)
$ cd /repos/on/your/local/machine
$ cd my_repository
$ svn mkdir branches
$ svn mkdir tags
$ svn mkdir trunk
$ svn commit -m "Initial structure"
svn mkdir runs a regular mkdir and creates a directory in the present working directory with the name you supply after typing svn mkdir and then adds it to the repository.
svn commit -m "" sends your changes to the repository and updates it. Whatever you place in the quotes after -m is the comment for this commit (make it count!).
The "working copy" of your code would go in the trunk directory. branches is used for working on individual projects outside of trunk; each directory in branches is a copy of trunk for a different sub project. tags is used more releases. I suggest just focusing on trunk for a while and getting used to Subversion.
working with your repo
1) Add code to your repository
$ cd /repos/on/your/local/machine
$ svn add my_new_file.ext
$ svn add some/new/directory
$ svn add some/directory/*
$ svn add some/directory/*.ext
The second to last line adds every file in that directory. The last line adds every file with the extension .ext.
2) Check the status of your repository
$ cd /repos/on/your/local/machine
$ svn status
That will tell you if there are any new files, and updated files, and files with conflicts (differences between your local version and the version on the server), etc.
3) Update your local copy of your repository
$ cd /repos/on/your/local/machine
$ svn up
Updating pulls any new changes from the server you don't already have
svn up does care what directory you're in. If you want to update your entire repository, makre sure you're in the root directory of the repository (above trunk)
That's all you really need to know to get started. For more information I recommend you check out the Subversion Book.
Here is the scenario that I have. I have a cvs repository in one location (A) and I want to replicate it and keep it in sync with a repository in another location(B). This would be a single directional sync from A to B. What is the best way to do this? If it is not really feasible in CVS then which source code control system would you recommend to accomplish this? Thanks
When using CVS, I don't know any tools to do that other than files syncing. You can achieve that using tools like rsync (Unix) or xcopy/robocopy (Windows).
If you plan on migrating to Subversion, it provides a tool called svnsync that allows to sync a repository from another one.
I would recommend you migrate from CVS to a proper distributed version control system such as git, which will provide this sort of functionality very naturally.
Subversion also provides svnsync which does the same sort of thing.
If you do take the rsync/filecopy approach with CVS, it is important to only sync the files at a time when there is not an active commit. Otherwise, the repository's lock file will get copied over and you will be unable to checkout/update on the target side until the next sync.
This reason alone may make CVS a bad choice. The migration path from CVS to Subversion is pretty smooth and there are tools to import a full CVS repo, with history, into Subversion.
Consider Git or Mercurial if you want to get into true distributed versioning, but it sounds like that would be overkill for your "read only" needs.
The Best (and perhaps costliest) way is Clearcase Multisite
But if you are looking for opensource, Git is becoming quickly replacing svn everywhere..