Version Control usage

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This page gives an overview of the options to use Version Control with REALbasic code, for the purpose of both archiving old revisions (keeping a history of changing) and enabling team work (merging separate changes of a single project item such as a class)

Contents

[edit] Basics

The kind of Version Control this articles talks about surrounds the following features when working with documents of any kind:

  • A storage system, e.g. an opaque folder on a personal computer or at a remote server such as SourceForge.net, maintained by special software (e.g. Subversion, short svn).
  • Storing revisions of a document, usually on command (i.e. the storing does not happen automatically).
  • Retrieval of any revision from the storage.
  • (Optional) Viewing the differences between two revisions in a convenient form
  • (Optional) Merging changes made parallelly in two separate copies of a document

The storage for your documents is called a repository.

[edit] Software for Version Control

[edit] Getting access to a repository

On the storage side, it depends on wether you want to use the local computer or a remote server.

In case of a remote server, there are several systems that provide free storage, such as SourceForge and Google Code. You may access existing projects (i.e. download the source code) or add your own project. For instance, Google Code hosts already several REALbasic projects: See here.

There are several commercial Subversion hosts that offer free packages as well:

You may also consider running a server on your own computer. For this, install a Subversion server. There are ready-to-use packages for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X: Search Google for subversion server

[edit] Tools for accessing the repository

To access files in the repository, you will need client software.

Subversion Client Software
Name Platforms Price
svn command-line Mac/Win/Linux Free
SmartSVN Mac/Win/Linux Free - $80
RapidSVN Mac/Win/Linux Free
Versions Mac Beta
Cornerstone Mac $60

[edit] Using REALbasic with Version Control

[edit] RB's version control project format

Caution: If you save your project in the version control format on a Mac OS computer, the files will use MacOS line ending (CR). This does not play well with most other Mac OS tools (e.g. FileMerge), neither with a Subversion server. Therefore, you should change the line endings ASAP to Unix (LF) once. When re-opening the project that has now LF line endings, the IDE will remember this setting the next time it saves the project, even if the project gets added new classes etc.
To change the line endings, you can use this REALbasic program: Change Line Endings by Thomas Tempelmann

... tbc ...

[edit] See Also

REALbasic-specific web sites on Version Control:

General web sites on Version Control:

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