Offline Version Control

[DanielSefton]

A disadvantage of developing closed-source software is that you miss out on the version control features of sites like sourceforge, especially viewvc/trac.

I've looked at solutions like Git, Mercurial and Bazaar, but I'm still confused which is what, how they work, what they offer etc. Apparently SVN can be used offline too e.g. SVK.

Does anyone here use offline version control, if so, can you offer any advice/recommendations?

Thanks.

[madmarx]

I use bazaar, but I got very specific need (biheaded source control on sources...).
There are things that I dislike on it, but on the average it's enough for my needs.
What I don't like with bazaar is that it tries to add everything at first, and instead of specifying the types that you want to track (.h/.cpp), you must put those that you don't want to track : a real assle when you got more than 5000 files with names like 000231, or 12149, recreated at each compile ...
Git was not enough good for my needs (which are very specific as I said).
I don't know the others.

[reptor]

Subversion. I use it on Linux directly from the Eclipse IDE, and have also used the kdesvn program to control it.

And, while I have not done this (yet), I believe you can rather easily set up Trac to work locally on your computer.

[johnhpus]

I used subversion on my computer, locally, for a while before I researched commercial hosting and saw how affordable it can be. Just install the SVN server software, configure it not to accept remote connections, and you're all set.

[Klaim]

The problem with local subversion repository is that it's harder to commit later to another server (but it's possible).
The long term plans of Subersion project is to add an hybrid distributed/centralized VC model so it will be more interesting in the (far?) future.

I think i would try git if it had a tool like TortoiseSVN to make it easier for non-programmer people (like a lot of artists for example).

[DanielSefton]

Thanks for the pointers.

In general SVN seems the way to go. Like Klaim said, the problem with Git, Bazaar etc. is that they aren't very intuitive to use - mostly being console-based. While I can cope with that, it's a bit like managing your project in the dark. Plus I've heard Git is a pain to run on Windows, not sure about the others.

Setting up some kind of intranet was something I had in mind, indeed with installing something like trac. But now I've found quite a few nice solutions for SVN server. I don't know why I didn't search that before.

Anyway, it's interesting to know what people use - there's surprisingly little useful discussion about it on the net.

[CABAListic]

Actually, I found bzr's console tools way superiour to svn's, in that tasks I regularly do are much easier done. Of course, svn has nice GUI tools (at least on Windows), but from a purely console-driven point of view, I prefer bzr. Also, to use bzr locally you don't need to setup any server, which I think is nice.

[tuan kuranes]

Simplest way to do local solo versionning I found on windows dev machine is that tortoiseSVN let you create local repository, wihtout need of any SVN server running:

http://thinkinging.com/2007/04/12/creat ... rtoisesvn/

(you can migrate it just moving the repository files, you can even send the repository to someone else, etc.)
(otherwise git tools is growing on windows too : http://code.google.com/p/gitextensions/ )

[Klaim]

Interesting feature, I'll have to take a closer look, thanks!

CABAListic> Is Bazaar complete enough for a serious project? I don't know the main differences between mercurial, bazaar and git.

[CABAListic]

@Klaim: I don't know, what would you consider complete? I'm not aware of any feature that svn has over bzr, but I do know at least one which bzr has over svn (which is true file renaming). According to the bazaar website, it's used by MySQL and others.
In any case, bzr and svn have made some differing design decisions far as I can tell, so ultimately it's a matter of taste. I would say that bzr is preferable in non-centralised development environments, whereas svn is more widely known and definitely has nicer tools.

[hpesoj]

Have you seen Origo? They are currently hosting my closed source project, and my experience with them so far has been fantastic. Perhaps there are issues that I haven't noticed, the service they offer really does seem too good to be true. The only issue I can figure is if they decide to stop hosting projects, but their FAQ specifies that users will have time to migrate in the unlikely event of this happening. Definitely check them out.

http://www.origo.ethz.ch/

[Chris Jones]

I use SVN for my final year project at uni. I have the repository on my data stick which i can take home/to uni which works really well. I don't think its too hard to move the repository later on if you need to move it to a server.

[nikki]

git FTW!

[Nauk]

I also had a closer look recently and bazaar seems to have definately the richer file options like Cabalistic said (delete rename etc) and there is a TortoiseBZR.