Good source control system for eveyday files
I want to start putting all my personal files without code (i.e. word documents, Excel spreadsheets, everything but media, etc.) under version control. The main reasons I want to do is that I can scan for changes and have some control before checking out the files in the repository. TortoiseSVN is perfect for this, however I don't want to pollute my filesystem with all the internal svn folders. Does anyone do this and offer any suggestions on how to localize these private svn folders in one place, or use an alternative system? SourceGear Vault looks great in that it uses SQL Server in the background, but it doesn't have a file explorer interface.
Thanks for any thoughts.
I've done this for a while with subversion on unix machines - kept a bunch of my home directory contents under version control. Of course, on unix, .svn / is invisible.
If you want to give it a try, just go ahead and pollute your stuff with .svn / directories. You can always easily destroy them all if you think this is a bad idea. I bet if you try you will learn how to ignore .svn directories before you know it.
Another option is to use some online services like dropbox . You get backup and version control (and the ability to share with others) for free up to 2GB. Sure, you fill this 2 gigs and end up spending money, but if you haven't played with it it's worth checking out. Version tracking (via the web) and sharing / syncing is actually pretty cool. I use it to manage shared project documents with remote employees.
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Most source control systems don't handle binaries very well. Also, their workflow (IMHO) doesn't work well for general office type work. Instead, pay attention to the various disk snapshots . The idea is that they take "atomic snapshots" of your disk at different times and can maintain them at different times. It can take snapshots every hour, but only keep the last 5 hour snapshots, the last 4 daily snapshots, 2 times a week, and some monthly snapshots. This seems like a better workflow for people using general purpose documents and applications.
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If you choose this solution, consider that:
1 / Anytime you can ' svn export
' your repository to get the tree without any .svn
2 / If you scan your tree with an external compare tool (like WinMerge ), you can teach it to ignore .svn directories entirely.
So you could:
- working on your tree <<21> -free "
- test any changes with WinMerge and copy the new versions of the files into your ".svn-filled" tree (your SVN workspace).
- registration via TortoiseSVN
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Have you seen svk ? It provides an abstraction layer on top of Subversion and stores all Subversion metadata in a central location on your local drive, so no more .svn
files in each directory. You will go back to your local repository svk
and then check your changes back into the main Subversion repository. You can choose to commit (for example, make small, small commits locally, but only one back to Subversion) or mirror immediately. This also means that you have access to metadata when you are on the move and not connected to the main repository, so you can search for previous versions, etc.
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I use Git for my code and personal files and I find it works really well. Does a little work on setting things up, I'm using cygwin, but I've heard that msysgit is simpler. No messy .svn folders, quick theme branches for experimenting with easy merging, and I use Github to push my backups every night.
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