Putting aside the fact that one is open-source, which tool is more feature rich and performant for SVN support within Visual Studio.
I've recently switched back to Ankhsvn (2.0) from VisualSVN. Prior to VisualSVN I was using Ankhsvn (1.0).
I prefer AnkhSVN 2.0 because it integrates with Visual Studio as a source control module, rather than an add-in and as a result it feels more like using Visual SourceSafe (which I am forced to use at my 9 to 5). Basically it integrates with Visual Studio the way Microsoft intended source control to integrate with Visual Studio.
For me it simplifies going back and forth between Visual SourceSafe and Subversion since they both behave essentially the same way.
I like AnkhSVN mostly because it is free. BUT, I love the VisualSVN server.
I didn't like either one. Using the shell/tortoise was preferable for me.
I paid for VisualSVN, its just worth it, even though I usually side with free (and even inferior) software. And by separating concerns by handing the actual SVN stuff to TortoisSVN, you get the best of both worlds.
Ultimately its down to how you work, and what you're used to, and since I was already using to TortoiseSVN, VisualSVN was a no-brainer.
I like the way that VisualSVN keeps you closer to tortoise. I also like its diff tools better.
I'm not sure if they changed it, but Ankh did not allow renaming of files in VS when I last used it. That was a pretty big pain for me as I have refactoritis and generally suck at naming files really well the first time.
VisualSVN for me. I've found it to be much more stable than Ankh.
+1 to VisualSVN because: a) it delegates most of the work to TortoseSVN, and b) it handles all move/rename shenanigans I throw at it from the Solution Explorer.
Related
I am looking for TFS free alternatives to manage source code. I ve worked with CVS and SVN. I know GIT and Mercurial, but I still haven´t worked with them.
I would to use anyone of them integrated with Visual Studio, with the same ease which use TFS (Solution Explorer contextual menu, a dockable source explorer, etc).
Do you know free plugins to do this?
I would highly suggest using Mercurial.
With visual studio, there is a free plugin http://visualhg.codeplex.com/.
In addition, there is a windows shell package you can install called tortiseHG which makes it super easy to deal with Mercurial in windows. http://tortoisehg.bitbucket.io/
There are other plugins that you can use for SVN and GIT.
For GIT, you might use msysGIT, which again has nice shell integration features:
http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/
As well as visual studio extensions
http://code.google.com/p/gitextensions/
For SVN, there is AnkhSVN http://ankhsvn.open.collab.net/
If you havent used alot of SCM's, I would highly recommend trying out Mercurial. Distributed SCM's are quickly becoming the optimal way to deal with source control. It's just the right way to do things.
Here are a couple of resources to get you started if you are interested in Mercurial:
Excellent tutorial by Joel Spolsky:
http://hginit.com/
Thorough coverage of Mercurial features:
http://hgbook.red-bean.com/
Best of Luck.
I use Git Extesions. It has nice windows gui and visual studio plugin. It works with cygwiin and msysgit.
I use Mercurial with TortoiseHg which provides Explorer context menus and status icons and the VisualHG plugin which provides Visual Studio integration and.
The level of integration with Visual Studio is not quite as slick as the level of integration that you get with TFS, nethertheless combined they make a very productive working environment. In fact in certain areas I prefer the integration over the TFS integration - in particular I find the TFS explorer a tad cumbersome as it requires that an instance of VS be running. In contrast the TortoiseHg repository explorer is very lightweight and quick to start.
I used "AnkhSVN" (http://ankhsvn.open.collab.net/) plugin to access SVN. Worked like a charm :)
I haven't done many things with GIT at the moment, but if you are familiar with SVN and are working under Windows you may have found TortoiseSVN yet. I recommend to give TortoiseGIT a try.
In fact I do not see any need for a tight integration into MS Visual Studio. I'm currently working with Access and (shame on me) Visual Basic 6, and there is no Subversion integration at all. Checkin/out, viewing the logs, branching and many other things work quite well under TortoiseSVN.
The last time I used this integration was Visual SourceForge, which by default provides file locks. This made it necessary to get a good integration. As SVN and GIT don't provide locks in the first place, I prefer to use a stand-alone client.
If you are using Tortoise SVN and Visual Studio, I highly recommend VisualSVN Visual Studio plugin. It is not free, but it's well worth the money.
We are in the midst of transitioning from asp, vbscript, SQL Server 2000, to asp.net mvc, sql server 2008.
When we were using classic asp, we could use Dreamweaver to lock access to a file on the network so that developers and designers wouldn't overwrite each other's changes when saving.
Is there an equivalent feature in Visual Studio 2010? Or, are there other techniques to accomplish this?
There most definitely are techniques to accomplish this.
Based on the upgrade, it sounds like the team is moving forward. Maybe that means business is good, maybe that means the team is growing or will grow, etc. In any event, and even if it's just a single developer, file locking to prevent overwriting each other's changes is no solution at all. Proper source control should always be used.
Visual Studio has support for TFS, naturally, but there are plugins for other (free) systems. SVN is a good one to get started. (Though, personally, I don't like IDE integration of source control. I prefer to see it as a file operation and not a code operation, and therefore prefer the Tortoise revision control clients for their Windows Explorer integration.)
You will almost certainly want to transition to a proper version control system.
Subversion is very popular and works well for most. TortoiseSVN is an extremely useful Explorer extension to make Subversion easy to use. There are also plugins for development environments. VisualSVN (not free) and AnkhSVN both integrate Subversion into Visual Studio.
Git & Mercurial are also very popular. Both are designed with distributed teams more in mind. They work largely the same as Subversion, but each version control system has slightly different "best practices" when it comes to work flow, particularly around branching and merging.
#quakkels: Go for TFS. I deeply hate it, but it will be easier for you.
SVN is for geeks, and GIT is for alpha-geeks (or for wanabes like me).
Is there a fairly inexpensive source control product on the market that integrates into Visual Studio 2008+ and that has the power and capabilities of Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server?
I have used Dynamsoft, SourceGear, Subversion and Platic SCM and reckon that neither of these products can come close to Team Foundation Server.
Ideally I would be interested in a product that:
handles conflict resolution well
handles IDE edits, renames and deletes automatically
easy project management within the source control "server" that allows a project administrator to painlessly manipulate the project structure as they see fit.
Subversion with Tortoise SVN
Here is an article by Rick Strahl on setting everything up.
I used svn at my last job, and tfs at my current one. I can't say I really like having to deal with tfs on a day to day basis.
SubVersion and AnkhSVN will integrate directly into Visual Studio.
Visual SVN is a tool to integrate SVN directly with Visual Studio.
(source: visualsvn.com)
It costs $49 per license.
They have a demo so you can see if it what you are looking for.
Actually, I've recently started using Team Foundation at work. Some of it is nice, but our team has spent at least 10 hours in total last week to fix silly TFS problems that never should have occurred in the first place.
While it isn't perfect, I find Subversion superior in many ways when it comes to plain source control. Get TortoiseSVN and shell out 50 bucks for VisualSVN if you want an integrated solution.
Personally I much prefer SourceGear Vault to SVN.
But it's hard to argue with free, and Vault is pretty expensive if you have more than 2 users.
Try visualsvn.
EDIT
Use VisualSvn as server (my bad, should have clarified I meant that), and as for the client, I used AnkhSVN, which got quite good over time.
From what I hear, VisualHg is a good Visual Studio addin for the Mercurial distributed source-control system. You just need to install TortoiseHg and then VisualHg, and you'll be up and running.
Well, you could use SVN in conjunction with bug tracking solutions such as Trac. There is a Trac Visual Studio plugin. There is also Redmine, though I don't know about its VS plugins.
If all you do is to "view, compare, attach changesets to work items and annotate", I guess bug tracking solutions are quite good.
What features of Team Foundation in particular are you interested in?
If you're just interested in Source Code Control, there are many plugins available for various other products. Subversion for instance has several plugins available which give a very similar experience to the Team Foundation plugin. AnkSVN is my personal favorite.
http://help.collab.net/topic/com.collabnet.anksvn.doc/concepts/ankh_whatis.html
We're going with Git but it probably doesn't have the integration with VS2008 you'd want.
Git manual: http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/user-manual.html
Mike,
If you are just looking for source control, the answer is yes.
If you are looking for an inexpensive replacement for everything that TFS does (build, test, project management, etc.) the answer is heck, no.
I'd like to try out a feature of AnkhSVN (namely, integration with Red Gate SQL Changeset tool) without doing an complete uninstall of VisualSVN. It feels dodgy, so I wanted to see if anyone else had experience that would either alleviate or confirm my fears.
Update
So I tried uninstalling VisualSVN and dropping in Ankh. As far as working within VSS itself, the change was completely transparent. Sadly, SQLChangeset did not work with this plugin, so that part of it was in vain.
Switching back was also painless, even to the point of not having to re-enter my license. So, good knowledge but no joy on the long-term goal.
Sort of. I've been able to install VisualSVN and AnkhSVN on Visual Studio at the same time. However, you won't be able to use both at the same time. VisualSVN is an add-in, while AnkhSVN is truly a source control plugin. To use one or the other, you simply have to disable source control binding (for AnkhSVN) or disable the plugin (for VisualSVN).
In my experience, though, I've found that VisualSVN was a much better client than AnkhSVN. VisualSVN handles ignoring user files (*.suo) and adding projects to Subversion very efficiently. AnkhSVN on the other hand, caused me some difficulty.
Hope this helps!
I haven't tried it, but I know Visual Studio supports multiple source control plugins. You just pick which one is active from the options by choosing Tools->Options from the menu and then finding the Source Control->Plug-in Selection page in the tree control on the left side of the window that opens.
It should just be a matter of installing Ankh and selecting it there for your tests, then setting back to VisualSVN when done. Of course, that assumes everything plays nice together.
You might be able to turn off / disable VisualSvn in Tools -> Addin Manager, and then select AnkhSvn as the current SCC Provider.
Can you describe how this changeset tool works, and how that should integrate with AnkhSvn?
I'm begining the development of a personal Web Application project. I'd like to have a source control system for that project.
At work, we user Team Foundation Server and I'm quite happy with that, mostly for the Visual Studio integration.
I'd like to know if there was free source control solutions that had the same kind of integration with VS2008.
I just started using Subversion actually, all I did was go to their website and download the server (took like 10 mins to install and setup). The installer asks you where you want your code repository to be and then it sets up the server completely. The only thing I had to do was put in a password file. I installed ankhsvn (which is an SVN client that integrates into Visual Studio) and it worked perfectly, without a hitch. Exactly how you'd expect. It's very little work overall.
subversion, mercurial
I think you have two options, really:
Subversion. It's easy to setup etc, and free. I like VisualSVN, which is $50, and worth atleast 5x that much, but you can use Ankh (free, OSS) or just use tortose (windows explorer plugin, OSS, free).
Once you have tortoseSVN (VisualSVN needs it too) you can make local repo's, or use a remote one, eg VisualSVNServer (also free), or personally, I have mine hosted with my websites at dreamhost :)
Another option is SourceGear Vault. It's GREAT if you have a windows-based server somewhere (it's SQL 200x + ASP.NET based, including SQL Express Edition I think), and it's free for one user. Very good if you are used to SourceSafe or TFS, and it can work in the SVN/CVS checkout-merge-commit way if you want to (not the default, but easy to change), or just use the check out - lock - check in way like VSS.
You might have heard Eric Sink of SourceGear on the Stack OVerflow podcast the other week - same company.
50 Bucks gets you all the subversion control you could need.
EDIT: And in the long run...50 bucks is as good as free...
I found Subversion very easy to install. AnkhSVN integrates into the Visual Studio IDE nicely and makes sure you don't forget to add new files created in the IDE to SVN. However, AnkhSVN also seems to have it's periodic hiccups.
TortoiseSVN seemed more stable when I used it, plus it has some advanced features (like a nice conflict editor) that Ankh is still lacking. That's why I use both Ankh and SVN for the best of both worlds.
visualsvn + ankhsvn works great for me
I have had good experiences with TortoiseSVN although it does not integrate directly into Visual Studio. It is free and integrates into Windows quite well.
If you want a solution that has more integration I would recommend Vault from SourceGear. It is free for individual users and is easy to setup. It has more features than SVN and direct access from within VS.
Subversion is good, but not that easy to install (since it requires Apatche). Take a look at Vault very simple to install, and works very well with Visual Studio. It's also free for single developer.