[RESOLVED] Version Control?

[sneakyimp]

I'm in the process of supervising a VB.NET development project and am trying to set up version control. My team has experience with SVN so we were hoping to use that -- at least internally. There are a couple of issues afloat here so I would appreciate any comments you folks might have.

One dev had suggested this for a server:
http://www.visualsvn.com/server/download/

I was rather hoping instead to set up SVN via apache on my linux box here rather than installing apache on my windows box and burdening it with yet one more duty.

It interfaces with a Visual Studio plugin client that is $79:
http://www.visualsvn.com/visualsvn/

Does anyone know if the visualsvn client interfaces with linux svn/apache?

Note that the client expects to use Team Foundation Server, a Microsoft product, and seems pretty set in their decision. Do we think it will be possible for us to use our own version control different from that of the client? I'm skeptical -- it sort of assumes some golden, age-of-aquarius cutoff date where we export from our version control into theirs and they take over. That sounds like a fantasy to me. TF Server is $500, but it might be worth it in the long run.

[jmcilhinney]

I can't answer your questions about Apache but I can tell you that we use VisualSVN Server her is our office installed on Windows Server and we use a combination of TortoiseSVN (Windows Explorer plugin) and AnkhSVN (Visual Studio plugin), which are both free, at the client end. We do a lot of work for a government department that uses TFS for their source control so, when we issue an initial release, we export from SVN and add everything to TFS. When we release an update we export from SVN again. We get the latest from TFS, overwrite that with our exported data and then commit to TFS.

[Nightwalker83]

I don't know about if/how Visual Studios handles version control but the software such as jmcilhinney above such as TortoiseSVN are great!

[gep13]

Hello,

I have previously setup SVN within Apache, and although it is possible, once I started using VisualSVN Server, I never looked back.

It pretty much takes care of everything for you, so I would highly recommend that you go that route rather than setting everything up yourself.

I have also used the VisualSVN Visual Studio plugin, and it works really well. This was back in the day when AnkhSVN wasn't very good, and I was willing to pay the cost for VisualSVN Pluging. I haven't tried AnkhSVN lately, but before John is using it, I can only imagine that it has come on a long way!

There are also other options such as:

http://www.syntevo.com/smartgit/index.html

Personally, I have moved onto using Git. Although there is a bit of a learning curve (especially if you do everything from the command line), it is very much worth it!

If you go down this route, there is the option of using git-tfs which by all accounts, works really well. Here is an article on this:

http://lostechies.com/jimmybogard/20...-with-git-tfs/

Gary

[gep13]

Also, since this question isn't really specific to VB.NET, I am going to move it to the General Developers Forum.

Let me know if you have any questions about me doing this.

Gary

[sneakyimp]

Thanks for the excellent feedback. I've yet to hear anything bad about VisualSVN. I think I'll certainly be using the client. As for the VisualSVN server, my reluctance to use that stems from the fact that my Windows workstation is already suffering from too many types of software having been installed. There are so many services/daemons/whatever running that I'm reluctant to also start running Apache on it.

Whether I use my win 7 box or my ubuntu box to host the repository, I'm starting to wonder about making sure things get hosted via HTTPS. It's very important for this project because of client requirements. We have been forbidden by the client from hosting their source code anywhere but from our office. Sadly, I don't have a static IP address so I'm wondering if I can use DynDNS or something to host the repository from my home office. I foresee a variety of complications:

* I wonder if VisualSVN client can be forced to use a self-signed cert for HTTPS connection or whether it will insist on properly signed certs.
* I can direct external traffic to the right box on my LAN using my router, but it gets tricky to set up vhosts if my public WAN IP changes.
* If my public WAN ip changes, I expect any self-signed certs may cause problems.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

[sneakyimp]

I'm also wondering if IPv6 might come in handy here -- IPv4 addresses are getting hard to come by.

[gep13]

Hey,

Sorry, I have never ran SVN in anything but a local intranet environment, so I can't comment on any of the above.

Gary

[sneakyimp]

I have resolved this situation also. I ended up setting up Subversion on my Ubuntu workstation and my co-devs are successfully connecting via HTTPS and interacting with the db. We are currently using TortoiseSVN but I hope to check into AnkSVN or some other option that integrates directly with Visual Studio at some point. Thanks for the responses.

[gep13]

Hello,

Glad to hear that you are now successfully up and running.

If you are happy that your questions in this thread have been answered, can you please remember to mark your thread as resolved?

Thanks

Gary

[sneakyimp]

I tried to do so but the thread tools menu doesn't have the 'mark resolved' option for some reason?

[jmcilhinney]

I tried to do so but the thread tools menu doesn't have the 'mark resolved' option for some reason?

The vBulletin software this site runs on was updated a couple of days ago and that feature hasn't been reinstated yet.

[gep13]

Ah, good point!

I will manually set it to resolved for you.

Gary