Project Location & Backups

[squatman]

Hi,

Not sure if this is the correct forum.

I use Visual Studio and mainly create WinForms/Console Applications; I'm wondering what the best location is for storing my projects.

I have local folders that I've tried in OneDrive and Google Drive so ensure I have an offsite backup, but I've come up against issues when publishing and installing NuGet packages, the project doesn't seem to like being in OneDrive or Google Drive so I end up copying out to work on (not very practical).

My other query is, before a sizable modification to a project I copy/paste the project folder sometimes rename sometime leave as Project (Copy 1) etc.

I've seen a lot about GitHub (originally thought was just for Visual Studio Code Web Applications), is this where I should store/work on my projects? Or is there something better?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thank you.

[PlausiblyDamp]

Hi,

Not sure if this is the correct forum.

I use Visual Studio and mainly create WinForms/Console Applications; I'm wondering what the best location is for storing my projects.

I have local folders that I've tried in OneDrive and Google Drive so ensure I have an offsite backup, but I've come up against issues when publishing and installing NuGet packages, the project doesn't seem to like being in OneDrive or Google Drive so I end up copying out to work on (not very practical).

My other query is, before a sizable modification to a project I copy/paste the project folder sometimes rename sometime leave as Project (Copy 1) etc.

I've seen a lot about GitHub (originally thought was just for Visual Studio Code Web Applications), is this where I should store/work on my projects? Or is there something better?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thank you.

You definitely should be looking at using a proper version control system, rather than just creating copies of the folder; git is built into Visual Studio these days so you may as well use it. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/vi...o?view=vs-2022 isn't too bad of an intro, although there are loads of resources on git if you search.

If you are looking at storing code somewhere other than your machine, and you are using git then github is certainly a decent option - Azure Devops is another one (also bitbucket and gitlab might be worth looking at too).

I would definitely avoid putting your code into onedrive / google drive / similar systems - as you have noticed it can introduce odd problems. I tend to just create a folder called something like code at the root of a drive and all my projects go there.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I would suggest that you look into GitLab. GitHub and GitLab are virtually the same (both work on Git), but have different licensing rules. I find GitLab to be better for any personal work.

I went to GitLab after wrestling with a situation that sounds about the same as yours. The one wrinkle I had was that I worked on a project primarily on one computer, but occasionally on a second computer. That meant that just keeping everything local on the one computer caused me two problems. The first problem was backing up the source in case of catastrophic hardware failure (like a hard drive going down). The second problem was sharing the project between the two computers. Using version control solved both of those, and GitLab was the superior choice at the time (and still is today, to the best of my knowledge).

Using GitLab, I keep the project local on the main computer, and at the end of the day it is a one click operation to commit the changes to the local Git repo (though you really ought to take the time to add a fairly verbose comment to the commit, as that will create a history that really pays off over time), then a second click to push the changes up to GitLab, which stores the project in the cloud. This is integrated into VS, which is what makes pushing the changes so simple. Then, when I switch to the other computer, I just have to pull the latest version of the project, make changes, then push the changes back up. Technically, I should be pulling changes on each computer as a first step, but since I'm the only one working on the project, I generally do remember which computer I was on last and whether or not the code on the current computer is up to date or not.

A third option might be Azure DevOps. I use that at work. The interface is clunkier than GitHub or GitLab, but that may be largely because of the way it is set up at work, which is less than ideal. The key question for a private individual, is the licensing between the different options. GitLab offers free private repos, GitHub has gone back and forth, and I don't know what Azure DevOps allows. They might all allow free public repos, but that would mean your code would be available to anybody.