Revision Control and Backups

esa · Post by **esa** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 8:22 am

I just wanted to ask if you guys use any revision control system and/or if you have some backup system for your source code when developing. I found a couple of years old thread about this on the OS Development forum. Back then people seemed to be using CVS, Subversion and Darcs. What I'm wondering about is if the situation has changed and if using version control is now more widespread.

At my school (I study software engineering...) no teacher teaches anything about revision control. So the situation is indeed very depressing.

IMHO even if you work by yourself you can still use a RCS (Revision Control System). Indeed you probably should... if you use it properly you'll always have the history of your files available and can revert to a previous version if things go wrong. You can also develop different features in their own branches and merge them together gradually when they are mature enough. Not to mention that you can more easily work with other people if you happen to get someone join in your project.

I myself use Mercurial... it has installation packages for both Windows and Linux, its pretty easy to learn to use (at least the basics) and the CGI scripts (work fine with Apache) which come with it and the "hg serve" command help me put the repositories online fast (I like to browse the repositories through a web interface). I have a separate machine which holds the "central" repositories and that machine backs them up (using a combination of cron and a custom bash script) on an external disk.

And those who have never used a RCS (Revision Control System)... have you ever considered using one?

PS. Sorry, this seems to have turned into a sermon...

AJ · Post by AJ » Wed Jun 04, 2008 8:28 am

Hi,

I use SVN (to be specific, TortoiseSVN). It integrates very smoothly in to the Windows interface and Eclipse IDE / #Develop which I use regularly and has save a lot of work on many occasions. Unless there was an extremely good reason, I wouldn't switch to any other system.

Cheers,
Adam

Solar · Post by **Solar** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 8:49 am

I use SVN (Subversion) for my sources - and RCS for my OS configuration files (/etc et al).

01000101 · Post by **01000101** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 10:19 am

I have a little batch file that runs every night that backs up my OS Dev files to 2 seperate storage devices. I've never used SVN and I don't think I need to, ive never had a real problem with losing both my orig file and then my backups in one night.

piranha · Post by **piranha** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 11:33 am

Google code is hosting my project, so there is the SVN bit.

Also, I backup all my important stuff on a separate partition every other day, and once a month create a backup CD.

-JL

Combuster · Post by **Combuster** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 12:09 pm

I use SVN off my own server. I don't do backups really as all my really important stuff is versioned and consequently present on at least two different computers (some stuff is present on four of them)

kmcguire · Post by **kmcguire** » Wed Jun 04, 2008 7:55 pm

I use GIT and I archive and email backups with mail client configured not to delete messages from server until I delete them in client.

JackScott · Post by **JackScott** » Thu Jun 05, 2008 2:14 am

I use Vista's automatic backup to backup my files to an external drive every night. Every week (on sunday at 9pm sharp) it burns a DVD of my most important files. Nothing else is necessary at the moment, since I almost always work alone.

robos · Post by **robos** » Sun Jun 08, 2008 3:51 pm

Perforce. It's free for up to 2 users and is cross platform (Win, OS X and various *nix flavors) including the GUI tools.