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My Secret Shame, I Still Use Subversion
- a2tech 17y agoThere's no shame in using a tool that works for you. Also thanks for the tip on TortoiseSVN integrating with Word's diff tool-thats an amazingly useful feature.
- dlsspy 17y agoIt'd be interesting to see that subversion graph vs. a git one. I don't know how to find all git repos on the planet, but github is claiming 1,000 new repositories per day last month: http://github.com/blog/493-github-is-moving-to-rackspace http://github.com/blog/493-github-is-moving-to-rackspace That's not quite the same as svn repository servers, but you can't ignore the other side is growing madly, too.
- brown9-2 17y agoEh, new accounts isn't really a great metric - would be more interesting to see how many of those repositories remain active over time.
- dlsspy 17y agoNew accounts is ~400 day, new repos is 1,000. I get your point. But I don't think number of web servers out there capable of also being subversion repositories is the greatest metric, either.
- lupin_sansei 17y agoSubversion? Shame? I still use Visual SourceSafe.
- weaksauce 17y agoI upvoted you just for the sheer brazenness of it all. Seriously though, why? SVN won't corrupt the database and is much easier to branch/merge than sourcesafe. That being said I don't think there is anything "wrong" with using SVN. (source safe was terrible in anything other than checking out the latest code the last time I had to use it for a job.)
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- noblethrasher 17y agoI've been using SVN for a while but I'm pretty sure that the VSS db corruption was due to its reliance on Windows file shares.
- lupin_sansei 17y agoI'm still using VSS as it's been 7 years and counting with no problems and I guess I'm feeling like "if it aint broke don't fix it". I'm aware that many people have corruption issues with VSS, so I do hourly backups, but almost a decade in it's been good enough for me not to care too much about looking for a new source control system. Also there is a new version of VSS for Visual Studio 2005 (VSS 2005) that seems to have fixed some issues that some people have had.
- StrawberryFrog 17y agoif it aint broke don't fix it With VSS, that's a bit like saying "if my unsafe vehicle hasn't failed while driving yet, let's just keep going".
- weaksauce 17y agoIf you are not opposed to closed source stuff you should have a look at Vault(1). I migrated us over at the job that used VSS and it was a better experience. Tight integration with visual studio and works similar to VSS without all the corruption, non atomic commits, etc. Whatever road you choose make sure to back it up because no system is infallible. (see the snow leopard user destroying data bug if you need to remind yourself of that.) 1. http://www.sourcegear.com/vault/ http://www.sourcegear.com/vault/
- lupin_sansei 17y agoYep I'm doing hourly backups, plus weekly backups stored offsite.
- icey 17y agoVisualSVN + tortoise is a nice way to switch over to SVN. You just have to get bit by a VSS db corruption once to make the switch. Something to keep in mind, your database may already be corrupt and you don't know it yet so your backups could be already be poisoned.
- ja27 17y agoI've been through two VSS db corruptions over the years. Never again. Quite possibly the worst Microsoft product of all time. We've been on CVS for many years.
- mattmcknight 17y agoMicrosoft Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC) had a nice feature- you needed a license on your server if you want to check out the code from there. I haven't used it in a while, so I don't know if that is still true. Storing everything in SQL Server is an interesting approach to selling another SQL Server license.
- uuilly 17y agoWhy the shame? svn works. I know git now, but it's been a two month headache.
- brazzy 17y agoThe shame's for being old-fashioned. DVCS is all the rage nowadays, all the cool kids are blogging about how great git is, the nonconformists argue with them that mercurial is better, and you sit alone in the cafeteria corner and daren't mention you still use something as uncool as SVN...
- jamesbritt 17y ago" and you sit alone in the cafeteria corner and daren't mention you still use something as uncool as SVN..." Or you go looking for that guy still using cvs and rank on his lack of cool.
- 3pt14159 17y agoA secret shame would be how I used to work in 2001. No source control whatsoever. awesome_flat_file_to_ms_sql_converter21_1.asp shudder
- avinashv 17y agoUntil about 18 months ago my source control was a bash file that would create a time-stamped backup of specific hard-coded folders into /usr/sourcebackups. Just a mkdir, name the folder, copy everything as it is. This was run as a cron every midnight. Not terribly proud of this. "Secret shame" is a pretty good way to describe it.
- brazzy 17y agoBah. I started using SVN for personal projects only about 2 months ago, and before that, my source control was "time-stamped ZIP archive created manually whenever I feel like it"
- avinashv 17y agoHaha good one-up. I recall doing that quite a few years ago, though I doubt I ever wrote a project longer than 500 LoC back in those days. One thing I found was the first few weeks of using a VCS I felt I was less productive and that the extra work wasn't worth it. I now see the benefits and am OK with the time sink of managing a repository, but do you find that for personal projects it's not worth the hassle for you at this point?
- brazzy 17y agoNot really - setting up the repository and getting the old projects into it was a bit of a hassle (actually much more the latter than the former, and mainly due to SVN behaving strangely with ignored files), but using it is hardly any additional work. I haven't really done much to use the capabilities either, but it just feels good to know that due to checking in frequently, I never have to worry about breaking something that was already working.
- brown9-2 17y agoAntiquated? Wikipedia says svn is only 10 years old. CVS is almost 20 years old! (And yet somehow, my place of employment, which is only a few years old, chose to use CVS and not SVN...)
- jpcx01 17y agoMaybe people react differently to it, but git has been my #1 productivity booster that I can remember. Combined with github, it's revolutionized the way open source projects work.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- brianto2010 17y agoJust be glad you are using a VCS. I know many people who still don't use a VCS when coding (and I don't regularly use any either).
- tolmasky 17y agoI've liked git for a while, but github really did it for me. As far as I'm concerned, they're one unit. Open source repos used to be such awful places: most of them seemed like little better than just hitting a directory listing for a web page. Github truly took most of the power of dvcs and made it accessible through the web. I want to fork things and try out a quick change because its just so easy. This is of course thanks to git as its underpinnings -- again, they are inseparable in my mind. Also, we used to use SVK to do the stuff git has built in, for that alone I would never switch back.
- mattmcknight 17y agoI'm sticking with Subversion, for now. I tend to work on team projects, not open source, and we tend to collaborate quite frequently, making frequent commits. It seems like many of the advantages of DVCS are being able to achieve private branches without using the server. I kind of like having the copy on the server. I like the idea of local history, and the implementation in RubyMine is pretty spectacular. Just adding that feature into Subversion would probably keep me off of DVCS for a while longer.
- there 17y agoi still use cvs and i have no shame in that. it does what i need, i've never had major issues with it, and i've managed large, multi-user and small, single-user codebases with it. i've had to use git and subversion to work with external projects and the one thing i noticed with both was that 99% of the time i didn't use any of the fancy features they claimed to support that cvs didn't.
- krallja 17y agoIn this article, Thomas Guest suffers from the blub paradox. "What do I like most? The command to revert a change. Merge it backwards. $ svn merge --change -666" This is like lupin_sansei writing an article about how much he loves that the command to edit a file in Visual SourceSafe is "check out." It's broken, and doesn't need to be that way. In mercurial, for instance, the command is called hg backout! I celebrate the fact that Mr. Guest at least uses version control at work, and Subversion is fine. However, the comfort working with it is the feeling of stagnancy in personal growth.
- steve19 17y agoWhat is the git equivalent?
- dan_sim 17y agoWe have projects on git and other on SVN and we prefer SVN. It may be a pain in the ass sometimes but it just works. Git is too complicated when all you want is a source-control for a team of two. But, every of our new projects are on git now... in part because of github...
- InclinedPlane 17y agoHave you tried Mercurial? I find it to have all the benefits of Git with a better interface and better documentation.
- dan_sim 17y agoI thought about it but I don't want to change yet another time and use 3 different source-control...
- michaelcampbell 17y agoDoes anyone use SCCS anymore?