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Ask HN: What is the best version control software for lone web developers?

3 points by soundsop 18y ago

tsally 18y ago
So did you link it because of the interesting subject matter or the fact that there is actually a serious discussion happening on reddit?
- soundsop 18y ago
  To make sense of this question, you have to know that the original submission linked to: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7tf8p/what_is_the_best_version_control_software_for/ http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7tf8p/what_is_t... I linked to the reddit discussion both because both the question the resulting discussion on reddit was interesting.
johngunderman 18y ago
I use SVN with the repository hosted on the same machine for all my lone projects.
patio11 18y ago
The most important thing: ANY source control is better than NO source control. It is 10,000 times more important that you pick one package, learn it, and USE IT than you pick any particular package. (Source control isn't useful until you've made it a routine part of the workflow.) I use SVN, because that is what I got started on and that is what I know. It works fine, for allowing me to go back to known-good versions of the code, and for allowing stupidly easy Rails deployments through Capistrano. But really, any of the alternatives are probably just as fine. [Incidentally, my repositories sits on a machine that gets backed up daily. That is, similarly, a good-enough-for-now solution. There are other alternatives: use a dedicated provider, put it on a machine other than the deployment machine, use distributed source control, whatever. Any of them works as long as the answer is not "source control on the same machine you spend most of your time on", and heck, that still captures a good deal of the source control benefit, come to think of it.]
bayareaguy 18y ago
I'd say Mercurial because 1. in terms of design, performance and features it's about as good as git. sure it may be missing this or that but see point 5 below. 2. in terms of end-user complexity it's about as easy to use as svn (which everybody knows) 3. 99% of the code is in cleanly written Python and highly portable 4. http://bitbucket.org http://bitbucket.org is great and they offer SSL for free private repositories (at github only paid plans offer SSL) 5. it's easy to hack (provided you know Python) I'll grant that the last point may not matter to the lone web developer but personally I like things that make it easy for me to tinker with them when I want or need to.
defunkt 18y ago
Any DVCS. $ mkdir solo_project $ cd solo_project $ git init Similar steps for hg and bzr.

3 points by soundsop 18y ago

So did you link it because of the interesting subject matter or the fact that there is actually a serious discussion happening on reddit?

soundsop 18y ago
To make sense of this question, you have to know that the original submission linked to: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7tf8p/what_is_the_best_version_control_software_for/ http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7tf8p/what_is_t... I linked to the reddit discussion both because both the question the resulting discussion on reddit was interesting.

johngunderman 18y ago

I use SVN with the repository hosted on the same machine for all my lone projects.

patio11 18y ago

The most important thing: ANY source control is better than NO source control. It is 10,000 times more important that you pick one package, learn it, and USE IT than you pick any particular package. (Source control isn't useful until you've made it a routine part of the workflow.) I use SVN, because that is what I got started on and that is what I know. It works fine, for allowing me to go back to known-good versions of the code, and for allowing stupidly easy Rails deployments through Capistrano. But really, any of the alternatives are probably just as fine. [Incidentally, my repositories sits on a machine that gets backed up daily. That is, similarly, a good-enough-for-now solution. There are other alternatives: use a dedicated provider, put it on a machine other than the deployment machine, use distributed source control, whatever. Any of them works as long as the answer is not "source control on the same machine you spend most of your time on", and heck, that still captures a good deal of the source control benefit, come to think of it.]

bayareaguy 18y ago

I'd say Mercurial because 1. in terms of design, performance and features it's about as good as git. sure it may be missing this or that but see point 5 below. 2. in terms of end-user complexity it's about as easy to use as svn (which everybody knows) 3. 99% of the code is in cleanly written Python and highly portable 4. http://bitbucket.org http://bitbucket.org is great and they offer SSL for free private repositories (at github only paid plans offer SSL) 5. it's easy to hack (provided you know Python) I'll grant that the last point may not matter to the lone web developer but personally I like things that make it easy for me to tinker with them when I want or need to.

defunkt 18y ago

Any DVCS. $ mkdir solo_project $ cd solo_project $ git init Similar steps for hg and bzr.