Creating new versions of a VB program

[Persist]

When I am developing a project and making some big changes, I like to create a second version of my project and work on that. After doing this yesterday, I lost a lot of new work and want to check whether the way I create my new version has flaws. I had my project in a folder in a Microsoft OneDrive folder:
C:\Users\MyName\OneDrive\Documents\Visual Studio 2022\BankSim02
I copied this whole folder into
C:\Users\MyName\OneDrive\Documents\Visual Studio 2022\BankSim03

Are there better ways of creating versions of programs

[Niya]

I think GitHub has strong versioning features. You might want to think about hosting your project there.

[Persist]

I think GitHub has strong versioning features. You might want to think about hosting your project there.

I was wondering whether Onedrive might have been a problem - but do not know what GitHub is, or how it could help in this situation.

I suspect that even though I have duplicated my entire program in folder BankSim03, VB may still be using or altering files in my original folder BankSim02

[Persist]

Also, if I changed where I stored my folders like BankSim02, I would probably store them on my own hard drive and back up when the project was complete to OneDrive or similar.

[Niya]

I was wondering whether Onedrive might have been a problem -

Not really. But it can become messy to keep track of which version is the most up to date and stuff like that.

but do not know what GitHub is, or how it could help in this situation.

This is a GitHub repository. GitHub is designed to host source code and it has features to manage versioning.

[pourkascheff]

I used to backup my projects in rar files at the end of the day, naming the date. Therefore, I even access pre-previous versions in case a huge possible failures. simply close the VS, extract rar, replace them and focus on changes... I believe in GitHub's versioning but quitting old habits, kills me. Peace.

[jmcilhinney]

You should be using some form of source control, be it GitHub or DevOps or something else. You may not use all the features available but it provides advantages for even the dinkiest of hobbyist developers.

[TysonLPrice]

We have been using TortoiseSVN for years. It is free.

https://tortoisesvn.net/

[PlausiblyDamp]

Modern versions of VS also have a lot of Git functionality built in these days, you can use Git purely local if you don't want to connect to something like GitHub or Azure DevOps

[Persist]

GitHub looks great. I am having difficulty getting it going so will post a separate query,
Back to my original query. Is copying a folder, e.g., BankSim02 to BankSim03 likely to lead to problems and lost files due to some overwriting?
thanks for your answers

[Shaggy Hiker]

I would suggest looking at GitLab as well as GitHub. As the name suggests, they are both based on Git, but they have different pricing models. Both have a free version, just with different benefits. I prefer GitLab to GitHub for the free private repos.

As to the question, copying one folder to a new folder will not lead to problems due to overwriting. The files aren't references to actual files, they are the files themselves, so if you copy them to a new folder, you get a new copy. No overwriting, no loss...from that source. However, some people have reported losing files with OneDrive. Whether this was a mistake on their part or something else is an open question. For my part, I found OneDrive to be annoying when working with multiple computers. I could never get it to behave exactly as I wanted. I wanted it to act as essentially a networked attached hard drive, with no more intelligence than that. A common storage area and nothing more. That's not what MS wants OneDrive to do. They want to do some automatic syncing, which doesn't work so well with multiple computers, because it isn't always clear.

GitLab/GitHub works much better in that regard, though it's a much 'heavier' solution, considering all the bells and whistles. It's a version control system, not a simple storage system, and that's important. It does mean some simple tasks don't quite work as you might expect. You are creating a new version such that you can revert back to some earlier version, which requires more bookeeping. That is usually pretty simple for the user with either Git. It doesn't feel quite as simple with Azure DevOps. Integrating either into VS is super easy once you know how to do it. There's a modest learning curve for the basics, and a whole lot of potential beyond the basics, but once you get the basics, it's pretty easy.

[DataMiser]

GitHub looks great. I am having difficulty getting it going so will post a separate query,
Back to my original query. Is copying a folder, e.g., BankSim02 to BankSim03 likely to lead to problems and lost files due to some overwriting?
thanks for your answers

For the most part no it should not lead to problems with over writing, provided of course that the source files are all in that folder tree and you are not linking to source files in some other location and of course you open the sln file that is now in the new location, all other code files are usually expected to be in a location relative to the sln location. If there is any doubt you can open the sln with notepad and see the path to the project file(s) and you ca open the project file(s) with note pad and see the path to any included source files and such so long as all those point to the current folder or a sub folder thereof then there should be no problem..