[svn.haxx.se] · SVN Dev · SVN Users · SVN Org · TSVN Dev · TSVN Users · Subclipse Dev · Subclipse Users · this month's index

Re: [TSVN] Interested in Implementing Subversion, but....

From: Simon Large <simon_at_skirridsystems.co.uk>
Date: 2005-09-07 11:19:52 CEST

David Valles wrote:
> However, Subversion seems to be geared toward each
> developer having their own working copy and testing
> their changes on their own machines.

Correct, and this is true of most (all?) version control systems. It is
referred to as sandboxes, and it means that when I try to compile my
changes, I don't have someone elses half-finished changes to worry
about. I am only debugging my own code.

> but because of
> software license issues and the maintenance nightmare
> it would take to do that we typically have a "test"
> system, which holds our test code and pending changes
> (with the appropriate licensed software), and a "live"
> system, which holds the live code. So, we only really
> have one "working copy." This single working copy
> problem is not likely to change.... What I need,
> though, is a workable, industry-standard version
> control system.

You have not made it clear what your problem is, or how you are trying
to work. Are you saying there is one test machine which has the
compiler, and all the developers access this one machine over the
network? What happens when 2 people try to compile at the same time?

You can have a single shared working copy on a network, and people do
that. It is risky because there is no way to stop 2 people editing the
same file, which is nothing to do with subversion, just a general
feature of networking.

> I noticed that TortoiseSVN can add a "Lock" column to
> Windows Explorer, and that could help multiple
> developers working in a "single" copy from trampling
> over each other, and the exclamation overlay icon also
> helps us to see pending changes, but commits might
> accidently put other programmer's code into
> production....

Locking doesn't work like that. If you lock a file in your working copy
then I am prevented from committing from my working copy. But if there
is only 1 working copy, everyone using that copy is effectively a keyholder.

Think about it. If I open a file in Notepad, how will Notepad know
anything about Subversion locking? OS file locking doesn't help you much
either because Notepad only needs access long enough to read the file
into memory. After that the file is closed and anyone else can open it
and edit. Whoever saves last is the winner.

Simon

-- 
        ___
   oo  // \\      "De Chelonian Mobile"
  (_,\/ \_/ \     TortoiseSVN
    \ \_/_\_/>    The coolest Interface to (Sub)Version Control
    /_/   \_\     http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@tortoisesvn.tigris.org
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@tortoisesvn.tigris.org
Received on Wed Sep 7 11:19:51 2005

This is an archived mail posted to the TortoiseSVN Dev mailing list.

This site is subject to the Apache Privacy Policy and the Apache Public Forum Archive Policy.