Source Control

How to be the 1337 in project management source control.

What is source control?

• Source control is a standardized way to manage software and code versions.

• It allows many people to work on a single coding project without disruption.

• Source control is a type of archive.

Why was source control invented?

• If PersonA and PersonB both are coders working on the same software piece at the same time, they may save over each other’s work.

• Perhaps there was an earlier version of your code that worked, but since you’ve updated it, it no longer does.

• Getting certain people to work with certain files can be tedious.

• Some software developing programs (Such as Visual Studio) only allow one person to use the project at any one time.

• Your boss is thinking about giving you a bonus and wants some convincing on how hard you’ve worked this week.

How does source control work?• Source control works by giving each member their own personal

directory, where only they can save.• Each member can access any other member’s directory, but with read

only permissions.• Archived directories cannot be written to.• After each day/upload/ what ever the type of program is set to, your

work is saved into an archive. The archive usually consists of the date and what files were changed, but additional parameters can be placed in, such as tags for easy searching.

• If in the future you need to recover a file, you can easily grab it out of the source control database and edit it.

• Some source control systems use a “check in” and “check out” system.

Additional Information

• There are programs that can be installed onto client machines which manage the source control, and the files associated.

• There are web applications where the files are uploaded to a webserver.

• Files are rarely stored on a client’s machine, instead they are sent to a source control server and backed up.

• Source control can be inside a single office, or across continents, distance doesn’t really matter.

You may be familiar with...

• Dreamweaver CS3 and later has a source control manager built in with it.

• Last year, if you remember, you had to “check in” and “check out” files.

• If you “checked in” a file, it would make it un-writable to anyone else who had access to it.

• You would have to “check out” the file before Dreamweaver would allow anyone else to edit it.

• This is a basic version of source control.

Source Control Software

• SVN (Subversion) – is a open source version control standard

• http://subversion.tigris.org/getting.html#binary-packages

• SVC (Software Version Control) is another less known program.

• http://www.brothersoft.com/software-version-control-download-71057.html

• Both of these are free to download.