Good tools are half the job. Being a one person shop I believed VSS was good enough for my source control needs. Almost everybody says Subversion is a far better alternative. The main advantage mentioned is (beside stability and all that) the different and better way subversion handles multiple users working on the same file. As a one person shop that's not that important. The main downside mentioned is a somewhat steep learning curve. But recently, after another frustrating struggle with VSS, I had enough and spent my energy on an exploration of Subversion.
It was a delight. The learning curve is by far not as steep as I feared. Besides that the documentation included is quite good. My only problem was to find a good starting point. I found this in TortoiseSVN, which presents itself as just a client but does contain everything I need. The help files tell all you want to know about Subversion and more. Here I'll just summarize the things you need for a jumpstart.
TortoiseSVN presents itself as a shell extension. So it is available in all explorer windows. Subversions stores the sources (or any other file) of a project in a repository. A repository is a folder in the file system. The procedure to create a repository and a working copy is different than VSS, there is no such thing as "Add to source control". You have to create and fill the repository first and create a new working copy after that. These are the steps:
- Install TortoiseSVN
- Create a folder to store your repositories. After setting up a repository you will not work with this folder yourself. All interaction runs through the TortoiseSVN shell extensions
- Setup a template folder. This folder describes the structure of new repositories. Recommended is the trunk/branches/tag tree you meet everywhere in subversion docs.
- Create new empty folder for the project.
- Right click it and pick create repository here in the TortoiseSVN context menu. This will fail when the folder is not empty.
- Select the template folder and pick Import in the TortoiseSVN context menu. You will be asked for a repository. Select the repository folder for the project you just created.
- Select the folder of the project you want to add to the repository. Again pick Import from the context menu. Select the repository and pick the trunk folder.
- Create a new empty working folder for the project.
- In the context menu pick SVN checkout and select the repository. TortoiseSVN will warn when the folder is not empty.
And now source control is fully integrated in the windows explorer, including all dialogs. An update from or a commit to the repository are just a context click away. TortoiseSVN presents the status of the folder in icon overlays.
You don't want all files to be under control. Because they muddle up your repository, but also because they spoil the visible status. Just building the project would turn the icon of the root folder red. TortoiseSVN has loads off ways to describe excluded files. I'm still wrestling somewhat with the list. So far I've come up with
*.dll* *.pdb *.CACHE _ReSharper.* *resharper* Iesi.Collections.xml Castle.DynamicProxy.xml log4net.xml NHibernate.xml
But there will be a better way without any doubt. There is also a Visual Studio add-in for SVN, the only Subversion commercial product I know of. (Yes, also subversion is an open source project) But I haven't looked at that yet.
I have only talked about this client tool. For the moment this does fulfill all my needs. I can reach repositories over the network using a file url like file://HARAHARA/Users/Peter/SubversionRepositories/Gekko\Website/trunk (mind the (back-)slashes). In case I need more, there is whole load of subversion servers available for any platform.
That's about it. Another great tool added to my box.