SA Developer .NET

Hi all,

I am looking for (and I know I am asking for a lot here) some form of source control software other than Vs SourceSafe () for use with my own little projects, that is free of charge, or at least doesn't cost an arm and a leg. These will be .net C# ASP.NET 3.5 projects.

 

Thanks, 

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The Question is the Answer, and the Answer is the Question!

SVN.

Nuff sed.

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Why go against tradition when we can admit defeat, live in decline, be the victim of our own design?
http://dotnet.org.za/calmyourself

Thanks Calm, Will have a look.

Ciao,

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The Question is the Answer, and the Answer is the Question!

I just knew at least one person would say SVN. LOL! Not many people know that SourceGear Vault is free for single users like contractors, etc. It uses SQL (Express is ok) for its data storage and works over HTTP/HTTPS using a Web service meaning you can have it setup on your home server and access it from remote. The Visual Studio integration is wicked and it also has a standalone GUI client and a client for Linux.

They also have a product called Fortress which manages bugs, work items and includes Vault all in one nifty system. Its also free for single users.

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Microsoft Xbox MVP | http://craign.net/

CalmYourself:

SVN.

Nuff sed.

I am actually not a supporter of subversion. With SVN you typically work offline not online (as with source safe). If two people edit the same file SVN merges the changes into a single file. I am told its actually really good at merging. With C code it just works (unless two people change the exact same line of code).

I just don't think it works well with .NET. If I change a base class or interface, I need my team to have the latest version ASAP. SVN was built for C/C++ developers where its a really bad idea to check in code unless it's 100%. .NET is a lot more forgiving about code errors than C is (think exceptions, etc...). With C coders, it can be a week between checkins, obviously you cannot "lock" a file for a week (as per Source Safe).

I know SVN can do a "lock" on a file. But the popular AnkSVN Visual Studio addin doesn't seem to support that workflow by default. I can't even find a config option to support automatic locking of files. I know there is an addin that emulates the source safe work flow and locks files when you edit them, but it crashed really badly when I tried it in VS 2008. And yes, there are non-free VS addins that could do that.

I just think its a bit backward, when C# and VS were designed to allow for far more rapid re-engineering of code than possible with C, yet people don't want to do a rapid checkin workflow. Perhaps I need to work on a bigger C# team (10+ people), maybe then I would reconsider my stance.

Cheers

Paul

monsta:

I am actually not a supporter of subversion. With SVN you typically work offline not online (as with source safe). If two people edit the same file SVN merges the changes into a single file. I am told its actually really good at merging. With C code it just works (unless two people change the exact same line of code).

I just don't think it works well with .NET. If I change a base class or interface, I need my team to have the latest version ASAP. SVN was built for C/C++ developers where its a really bad idea to check in code unless it's 100%. .NET is a lot more forgiving about code errors than C is (think exceptions, etc...). With C coders, it can be a week between checkins, obviously you cannot "lock" a file for a week (as per Source Safe).

I know SVN can do a "lock" on a file. But the popular AnkSVN Visual Studio addin doesn't seem to support that workflow by default. I can't even find a config option to support automatic locking of files. I know there is an addin that emulates the source safe work flow and locks files when you edit them, but it crashed really badly when I tried it in VS 2008. And yes, there are non-free VS addins that could do that.

I just think its a bit backward, when C# and VS were designed to allow for far more rapid re-engineering of code than possible with C, yet people don't want to do a rapid checkin workflow. Perhaps I need to work on a bigger C# team (10+ people), maybe then I would reconsider my stance.

Cheers

Paul

To each his own I suppose.  My team is made up of Continuous Integration junkies, so we don't encourage checking in work that isn't complete.

Don't get me wrong, SVN has it's problems and nuances.  Believe me, we worked up quite a sweat getting it to work with DB source control.  But it's working very well for us.

Oh, and we used to use source safe and moved to SVN from there. It wasn't a fit with our team.

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Why go against tradition when we can admit defeat, live in decline, be the victim of our own design?
http://dotnet.org.za/calmyourself

CraigN:

I just knew at least one person would say SVN. LOL! Not many people know that SourceGear Vault is free for single users like contractors, etc. It uses SQL (Express is ok) for its data storage and works over HTTP/HTTPS using a Web service meaning you can have it setup on your home server and access it from remote. The Visual Studio integration is wicked and it also has a standalone GUI client and a client for Linux.

They also have a product called Fortress which manages bugs, work items and includes Vault all in one nifty system. Its also free for single users.

Yeah, SourceGear is really nice. But is only free for single users unfortunately.  Still, for the OP it would work well.

BTW, SVN can also be exposed over HTTP/HTTPS using webservices... But VS integration does suck pretty high on the suck-scale

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Why go against tradition when we can admit defeat, live in decline, be the victim of our own design?
http://dotnet.org.za/calmyourself

The great thing about Vault and I suppose Fortress is that they fully support continuous integration and even provide a specialised plugin to improve build times under CruiseControl.NET.

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Microsoft Xbox MVP | http://craign.net/

+1 for SVN - An advantage off the top of my head (one of many) - zipping up a folder, emailing to it to another machine, editing the files and checking them back in whilst maintaining full history of the changes. Try doing that using VSS!

As for not locking files, allowing multiple people to edit the same file solves a lot more issues than it causes and in a team situation practices like Continuous (and frequent!) Integration can circumvent most of the associated problems.

Also, AnkhSvn 2.0 has just been released and is now no longer just a VS add in but a SourceControl Provider - so you can do things like locking in the IDE, if you really want to.

[1] http://ankhsvn.open.collab.net/

 

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Driven Software

PS, if you go the SVN route, try using SVN-1-Click to remove a lot of the headache around configuring your first repository.

http://svn1clicksetup.tigris.org/

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Driven Software

+1 for SVN - at least, until bzr is Windows friendly.

Another Windows-friendly SVN server (licence is free for the server software) is VisualSVN. www.visualsvn.com/server/

I second the point about AnkhSVN as well, although I also have tortoiseSVN installed. Convenience and stability =

We have a hosted repository using SVN / Apache and use Tortoise SVN as the client for developers to work with the repository. We can work from anywhere and I can maintain my repository while stuck on the N1 to Pretoria...

+10 for SVN!!!!!!

Subversion supports atomic commits so its all or nothing, so who really cares if you working online or offline... I am able to rollback changes even when I am not connected to the repo... Have not had a failed merge to date! *touches wood*

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