Just moved to subversion...from visual studio. I love it already! Can someone briefly explain
Repository
Branches
Tags
Trunk
Do I need to create a new repository for every project? Or a new trunk?
Thanks
You don't need a separate repository, but you can if you want. I recommend reading the book at http://svnbook.red-bean.com/. Grab the pdf version or whatever. It doesn't take too long, and it explains some things pretty well. I read it, and found that I'm glad I did.
Remember that subversion is just a fancy filesystem that supports versioning. Think of a repository as a "drive root" like "C:/".
Each project gets a trunk, tags and branches directory. All of your day to day work happens in the trunk. Experimental code is done in a branch and then merged back into the trunk at a later date. Tags are for when you release the software. These are not to be edited. When you release the software, you create a tag with a unique name based on what is currently in the trunk.
I can't say whether or not you need a separate repository for each project, there are pros and cons. This blog posting details them:
Simplified administration. One set of hooks to deploy. One repository
to backup. etc.
Branch/tag flexibility. With the code all in one repository it makes it
easier to create a branch or tag
involving multiple projects.
Move code easily. Perhaps you want to take a section of code from
one project and use it in another, or
turn it into a library for several
projects. It is easy to move the code
within the same repository and retain
the history of the code in the
process.
Here are some of the drawbacks to the
single repository approach, advantages
to the multiple repository approach.
Size. It might be easier to deal with many smaller repositories than
one large one. For example, if you
retire a project you can just archive
the repository to media and remove it
from the disk and free up the storage.
Maybe you need to dump/load a
repository for some reason, such as to
take advantage of a new Subversion
feature. This is easier to do and with
less impact if it is a smaller
repository. Even if you eventually
want to do it to all of your
repositories, it will have less impact
to do them one at a time, assuming
there is not a pressing need to do
them all at once.
Global revision number. Even though this should not be an issue,
some people perceive it to be one and
do not like to see the revision number
advance on the repository and for
inactive projects to have large gaps
in their revision history.
Access control. While Subversion's authz mechanism allows
you to restrict access as needed to
parts of the repository, it is still
easier to do this at the repository
level. If you have a project that only
a select few individuals should
access, this is easier to do with a
single repository for that project.
Administrative flexibility. If you have multiple repositories, then
it is easier to implement different
hook scripts based on the needs of the
repository/projects. If you want
uniform hook scripts, then a single
repository might be better, but if
each project wants its own commit
email style then it is easier to have
those projects in separate
repositories
I agree, read the svnbook. It's a great resource.
Do I need to create a new repository for every project? Or a new trunk?
Kevin covered the single/multiple repository trade-offs pretty well. When we started with svn, we used one repository for all of our development projects. It worked well and had all the advantages mentioned. However, as the repository got bigger it got more difficult to administer because of the size of the dump file and resulting issues during backup. It also became an issue that projects couldn't easily be archived out of the repository - it's certainly possible but it requires dumping and pulling out projects from the repository. They aren't issues you can't get around but it's something to keep in mind.
Repository
Branches
Tags
Trunk
Branches, tags and the trunk are just copies of your files contained in the repository. It allows you to segregate and check-mark your files at whatever time you feel appropriate (usually at a release or a feature branch).
An important thing to keep in mind about branches, tags and trunk is that they just conventions in svn. There is no functional difference between the three locations, they are just an accepted usage model and they can be changed or organized differently if you have a good reason. I'm not recommending that you organize differently but you'll find that svn is very flexible because there isn't really a forced organizational structure other than convention.
Depending on how many projects you decide to have in your repository, you may organize differently.
You can have the subdirectories with projects under it:
\repo
\branches
\...
\tags
\...
\trunk
\..
or you can have projects contain the subdirectories:
\repo
\Project1
\branches
\tags
\trunk
\Project2
\branches
\tags
\trunk
There are trade-offs that are covered in the svnbook. The first method is usually used if you only have one project per repository and the second if there is more than one project in your repository.
The nice thing is that you can just start using svn and then figure out what you prefer. You should have some sort of organization but, with cheap copies, you can always re-arrange the folders as your situation or workflow changes.
An important thing to remember with SVN, compared to other version control systems like CVS or Git, is that SVN doesn't really have a concept or branching or tagging. As far as SVN is concerned it's all just a bunch of folders and files. So while you'll see a lot of people using the branches/tags/trunk setup, this is not required and you are able to deviate from this if you so choose.
Generally speaking 'trunk' is where you keep your active development going. So this is where you do all your commits. Whether or not you checkout trunk or use tags/branches instead is entirely up to you.
Branches, as I've used them, are usually for when you need to do large changes to your application but don't want them in trunk because you want to be able to continue developing against trunk without deploying your other changes. In this case you may have something like
\repo
\trunk
\branches
\version_two
In this case you can develop in both trunk and version_two separately and, assuming your live site is a checkout of trunk, you don't need to worry about 'accidentally' breaking your live site with your other changes. And when those changes are done and ready you just merge them back into trunk whenever you want.
Tags can be used similarly to branches, in that instead of checking out trunk and just using 'svn up' to update your repository you instead of several tags, each representing one release. So your repo may look something like
/repo
/trunk
/branch
/version_one
/version_two
/tags
/1.0.0
/1.0.1
/1.1.0
In this case the general idea is that when you're ready to do a deploy you do an
svn copy
To copy trunk over to a tag (in this case the next one could be 1.1.1, 1.2.0, 2.0.0, etc). How you name your tags it entirely up to you though and, again, depends on your project and requirements. With this route instead of doing a regular 'svn up' you would have to do an svn switch. So you have to deploy with
svn switch https://svn.yourrepo.com/repo/tags/1.1.0
The switch will automatically do updates, adds and deletes on the appropriate files.
When it comes to one repo for many projects or separate repos for each one I am an advocate of one repo per project. It provides the additional benefits of easily managing access to it. But most importantly it means that each project has a separate commit history and separate logs. This m
Reading your tags I see you started using VisualSVN instead of your old VSS system. (Your question says you stopped using Visual Studio.. which makes VisualSVN a strange choice).
One of the major differences between SourceSafe and VSS is that you can choose different tools to access the same repository (and you can switch every time you like as they all share the same workingcopy).
E.g.:
TortoiseSVN for Explorer integration.
The normal subversion client for scripts.
VisualSVN as Visual Studio frontend for TortoiseSVN
AnkhSVN as real SCC (VAPI) package in Visual Studio.
Related
I have been tasked with setting up some type of version control for our development server files location. We current use Oracle's Service Cloud called "Right Now". It holds our dev/staging/prod environments for multiple sites.
Basically I need to VC just the dev files.. and not have to carry a local repo. Is this possible? The reason being for no local is there are just tooo many sites to download all locally. I want to open the files in Sublime from the dev server, make changes, save them, then at some point create a commit regarding the files I changed since the last commit. How can this be done.
I would love to use git, but this requires a local repo as far as I can tell. What about SVN? Could this do it? Your suggestions and resource links are appreciated.
~ WB
Unfortunately I'm not familiar with Oracle's "Right Now" product so I may be missing something important here. Putting this "Right Now" aside, I can say that Apache Subversion can be a good match for your requirements.
With Subversion you don't need to download the whole repository as you need with Git. Subversion's working copy which you need to svn checkout is much less in size than the whole repository in Git because is represents a particular snapshot of the repository's state in time (it does not contain the whole repo history as in Git).
You can checkout only a part of a repository. E.g. if a repository contains multiple projects, you can choose which ones to checkout.
Using sparse directories / shallow checkouts can help you to minimize the size of the working copy by specifying only those modules you require to operate on.
Question: What is the best way to maintain a project based on another OSS project, through Xcode and version managed by SVN?
I'd like to start a fork (?) of a reasonably popular open source project (it's allowed). Mostly, I want to build my own user interface written in Cocoa/ObjC for it and throw in a few custom features of my own as well.
Now, this OSS project isn't exactly small. The project itself has over 3000 files, and the build process is pretty intense- consisting of multiple stages and steps, which need to compile build tools, run those, then compile the results.
All this is fine and dandy in Xcode, since it's easy enough to setup build phases and rules to handle everything.
What I'm not clear on, is how best to manage patches from upstream. They are constantly working on the project and I'd like to be able to keep up to date with those patches as easily as possible, as many of the diff files effect sometimes up to a hundred (!) files at once.
So maintaining a pristine unmodified copy of that source tree so I can apply patches to it seems like a smart thing to do, because I really don't want to be sorting through hundreds of files every few weeks merging patches by hand.
What I'm thinking of doing in this regard is:
1) Setup an "upstream" SVN repo to hold a copy of the upstream source, plus the bare minimum required to compile it in Xcode (so an xcproject, a few xcconfigs, some prefix header files and that's it)
2) Setup my own "downstream" SVN repo where I do all my work and apply my own modifications.
Whenever upstream releases a patch, I can apply it to #1 then synchronize across to #2, and deal with any issues created by my own modifications.
What I'm not clear about, is if this is a sane way of handling things- or if there's some better practice I should be following.
Is this the best way to handle things, or should I be looking at doing this some other way?
In SVN-world it was named "Vendor Branches" long time ago and intensively used by many teams (you can additionally google this phrase)
Technically it's
one SVN repo
at least one special branch (special in terms of usage, nothing more), which, with svn:externals, linked to 3-rd party repo of upstream code
your place for changes (trunk or any other place, I prefer trunk), initially created as copy of vanilla code and there you perform all code-hacks
If (or "when") vendor branch got updates from upstream, you have just merge branch to /your place/, integrate changes and continue to work
I've started working on a new Perl module and I've decided that I want to make a Ruby version of it as well (once I finish the Perl version). Do people tend to make separate repositories for each language? Or put them in the same repository?
I can easily see how the two sets of code are different enough to be treated as separate projects. But at the same time it's the same functionality written in two languages, so from that perspective it seems like a single project with two language ports.
What's considered best practice in this situation?
FWIW, I'm using git.
EDIT: I should be more clear here. These aren't modules in the sense of git submodules. They're modules that will be submitted to CPAN and RubyGems. Users of this project will likely be installing it via cpan or gem and then using/requiring it in the normal fashion.
In the course of my group's research, we have a couple repos, some with different technologies in each. We divide the repos by research question and checkout only the projects we are working on, with the repos having a uniform hierarchal directory structure that is the same for all projects. Since we already know the repo directory structural, running scripts and finding data becomes much easier.
I would recommend taking the same approach. The higher the division between the two technologies, the easier it will be to contribute to one of them without being confused by the presence of the other.
In the end ask yourself this: If I were to add another language, would I still keep it in one repo? If the answer is yes, keep doing what you're doing. If not, keep these libraries in two separate repos and manage the projects and contributers distinctly.
my experience in this kind of case is to have 2 smaller git repos for each of the modules and either cloning one branch into the consumer projects repo makes it quite simple. another way is to create a naked clone from the module's repo into the consumer projects repo, then just keep updating it as each module's development progresses. the consumer project should ignore the injected repos.
once other dev clones module A, and/or B, then he/she can just push to consumer project, as permissions allow. this is either a pro or a con depends.
I have a project repositiory on Start Team server.
I need to take regular back up the same.
How can I achieve this?
The Star team backup steps are given in the Appendix C of the “The StarTeam Administrator’s Guide.pdf”
It depends on what you mean by backing up the Project. If you mean backing up the entire repository then StarTeam makes this really easy. You just need a snapshot of the DB and a full copy of the repository files (full steps are documented.) However, if you mean backing up a specific Project in the repository, and ONLY that Project, with all history intace, then this is not currently possible--or at least it is a major challenge.
StarTeam used to have an ability to Import/Export projects but they discontinued support and development of that tool years ago. If you wish to back up a single Project independent of the rest of the server, then this is still possible, and useful in the case where you want to split the repository into a separately managed repository. Here is how to do that:
Create a duplicate repository including all of the repository files.
Delete everything from the clone except for the Project(s) that you want to split off -- note that in StarTeam 2011 the Project Delete was broken, so you may need to do this in a direct SQL query which marks the projects/views as deleted. Contact Support if you run into problems deleting manually, especially if you have a large repository.
Once your clone has been pruned of unnecessary projects, run the Online Purge tool until all projects and respective files have been removed from the DB and the Vault.
You can now change what you need to change on the new repository, such as the users, groups, security, etc. without affecting the first repository.
Once you have validated the new repository is working properly, you can then run a similar process on the first repository to get rid of the projects that were split off.
Another potential use for this is if you had reached end of life for a project and you wanted to keep it offline and backed up but wanted it to be restorable with full history on demand (for regulatory purposes, etc.) while being freed up to remove it from the active repository so you can make other projects run faster. Though this is probably best done in batches of projects as the process is currently quite labor intensive to perform.
If I have a C# solution with multiple projects in it, what would be better, to have the Git repo created in the solution folder, or in each individual project folder? Multiple developers will be working on the projects. What are your experiences with this?
I use several (sometimes overlapping) solutions to contain a collection of related independent applications and shared libraries. As others have mentioned, you really don't want to have a single Git repository containing the source for multiple, independent projects as it makes it much too difficult to track isolated changes.
So, if your solution is structured as mine is then you will definitely want individual Git repositories for each project. This has worked well for me for ten to twelve applications and doesn't create as much maintenance overhead as you might think.
If your solution is truly monolithic (and you're sure you want it that way forever and ever), then it probably makes sense to only have a single repository.
It depends. git repositories are most suited to containing a single configuration item with its own independent lifecycle. If your projects have their own release cycle and are shared between multiple solutions then it might make sense to have them in their own repositories. Usually, though, it is the solution that represents a configuration item with all the constituent projects forming part of the same build. In this case a single git repository at the solution level makes more sense.
git submodule is probably worth consideration here. Each project gets its own repo, the solution gets a repo, and the projects are submodules.
I assume that your solution represents some kind of a product while the projects are just a part of the product.
In this situation I would create the repository on the solution level. This way it is a lot easier to build the whole product at once, especially if the projects depend on each other.
Some though and 3 solutions on the subject can be read on that blog:
https://www.atlassian.com/blog/git/git-and-project-dependencies
package management tool, i.e. nuget in VS, so using reference to a package/compiled module
git submodule (only with command line in VS?)
other build and cross-stack dependency tools
Another solution is just to add a project from the other repo and let it out of the current repo, and latter use the Team Explorer to commit its changes.