Open Source Life: Subversion, a revision control system (part 3 of 3)
It’s such a lie to call this Part III. Feels like part 33, but I wanted to close out with a couple of final notes.
There’s only three:
1. DO NOT PUT EVERYTHING UNDER REVISION CONTROL
Really, it’s a bad idea. Everyone will make up different rules about this, but no matter what not everything should be placed inside the repository. I came up with the following couple of rules to prevent my habitual tendency to just Subversion stuff:
- Only put relatively stable drafts and projects under revision control.
- Only put things into Subversion that need change or version tracking. If I don’t care about previous revisions, keep it out of the repository.
- No images. Keep images someplace else unless they won’t be changing much and somehow need to be associated with a certain project like a web page.
- No program applications. Never, never.
- No “published” documents (aka. PDF or Microsoft Word Documents or OpenOffice Docs). XML, HTML, and even sometimes Rich Text Format (RTF) are all acceptable, but where possible, only check in the human parseable source of published documents.
2. Subversion is not a backup system
Subversion can make backing up extremely easy, and in my case, shrink the size of all of my documents (my repository hovers around 6 megabytes).
Once you put all your hard work into building your repository, make sure you have someplace located away from your computer’s hard disk to store a backup copy of it. There are loads of free online storage services available. Do yourself a favor and backup your work on one.
3. TortoiseSVN and Windows Vista don’t always play nicely
I don’t know why Microsoft had to go and be such a bunch of dick-bags and make Vista so different on the inside but so annoyingly not so much better on the outside. Case in point, every now and then TortoiseSVN seems to crash Explorer.exe. I’ll admit that I’ve been a bad Open Source community player by not submitting my crashes to either Windows or the TortoiseSVN group–admitting it in this article will probably shame me into doing something about it.
My friend Steve pointed me to this article about fixing a problem with TortoiseSVN on Windows Vista (e.g. Problems with errant File Locking). This wasn’t my problem, but I hope this can help someone else out.
Crashing Explorer.exe on Windows Vista does not have near the bad impact as on previous versions of Windows, but it’s still annoying. But it’s not too bad. I’ll be using Subversion long after I’m done using Windows.
That’s all I have to say right now. Hope you’re having a great weekend!
Open Source Life: Subversion, a revision control system (part 2.6b of 3)
Branching. You haven’t really used Subversion until you have branched something.
I recommend viewing this video in full screen (click the icon to the left of the volume button).
For the direct link on YouTube, go here.
That’s all the videos for now. Must resolve hosted video quality before I’m willing to put the effort into making anymore.
Open Source Life: Subversion, a revision control system (part 2.6a of 3)
A final few notes for now. This part deals with Subversion’s revision numbering, and how to access previously stored versions of a saved document.
I recommend viewing this video in full screen (click the icon to the left of the volume button).
For the direct link on YouTube, go here.
Open Source Life: Subversion, a revision control system (part 2.5 of 3)
Part 5 is here. I’ve been having problems with my free hosting at openomy, but no matter I now have my own server running. When I get Apache up and running, I’ll host my stuff over there. For now, the video below comes directly from YouTube. Bad quality, but still does the job.
I recommend viewing this video in full screen (click the icon to the left of the volume button).
For the direct link on YouTube, go here.
Odd display problems on my blog?
I hope it’s just me, as articles are occasionally overlaying one on top of the other in my browser. I haven’t figured out why, but if you notice it, too, please let me know.
Open Source Life: Subversion, a revision control system (part 2.4 of 3)
And here we cover “Checking in” and “Checking out” files. Silly me, since I haven’t been scripting these, you’ll notice in the beginning I say this one will be, “The shortest video so far.” Hah! and oops.
Download
I recommend viewing this video in full screen (click the icon to the left of the volume button).
Had to split the video to post it on YouTube. Part 4a is here. Part 4b is here.
Open Source Life: Subversion, a revision control system (part 2.3 of 3)
Part 2.3: Organization
Download
I recommend viewing this video in full screen (click the icon to the left of the volume button).
I have started cross-posting these videos at YouTube under my channel. The quality isn’t as good, but if you’re having trouble viewing it here, then YouTube is the next best thing.