What VCSs do you use?

1

Xojo Inc. released a video on source control on YouTube today. That got me curious: What version control software do you use?

  1. Subversion
  2. git
  3. Mercurial
  4. some other
  5. or none at all?

For many years I used a combination of standard backups and taking “snapshots” (ZIP files where I added a timestamp to the name) several times a day. This system worked in a way, but was lacking in some important areas.

Then I started using Subversion. Maybe because it was the very first version control software I used, but I found it overly complicated, bloated in some areas, and lacking in others. I haven’t looked at it for years, but back then it didn’t have a ticket/bug-tracking system for example. There was some 3rd party tool (“trac” IIRC) that could be installed “on top” of Subversion, but it didn’t have an easy installer, and I didn’t have the patience/knowledge to configure its install scripts.

So after a few months I started using Mercurial. While I found it easier to use in many aspects, it too didn’t have a ticket system. And soon the GUI I used (Sourcetree) became commercial (or at least some advanced functions were moved to a “pro” version). Also development in regards to Mercurial seemed to stop for a while, when they added support for git. Or that’s how I remember it.

At this point I went back to my trusted system of backups and snapshots.

Some time later I came across “fossil” (https://fossil-scm.org). For those who don’t know, this is made by the same guy who creates SQLite. It was originally written to version control SQLite. So SQLite is version controlled by fossil, and fossil uses SQLite to store its data. Talk about eating your own dog-food…

It comes with an integrated server, ticket system, forum, wiki and what they call “embedded documentation”. It may not have a shiny GUI (just a simple web UI) and you’ll need to use the Terminal/Shell for most VC work. And yes, there are ticket systems and forums with more functionality.

But for me as a single programmer (and for smaller teams) fossil brings everything I could want. It’s small, comes as a single(!) executable file and is easy to install:

  1. Download
  2. Unpack
  3. Run

Of course, over time you’ll want to configure fossil to your needs, and you can relatively easy do this. But to get you started, those three steps are all it takes.

So, I’ve found my version control system in fossil. I’ve never since looked at other VCSs.

Sorry, this wasn’t intended to be an ad… :wink:

2

VCS and bug tracking, while often used hand in hand, arent the same
Its handy you can get a tracker and vcs in one like Fossil though

For version control I’ve used subversion and git and even a couple other commercial options
I’ve run svn locally on my own machine, hosted by atlassian and have used git with other devs and have some github projects

For bug tracking its all over the map from home grown to bugzilla to trello to mantis and a few others

3

For bug tracking I’ve been using:

https://bugtracker.zoho.com/

For version control I use GIT but have been looking for alternatives.

4

I just find git complicated esp for a small team that doesnt need tons of branches (which git was deigned to handle)

SVN is much simpler

I really dont care if Git is distributed etc … it matters not

5

True, SVN is easier to work with than GIT. I got used to GIT when I spent a good number of months attempting to learn Javascript and since there is su much JS related stuff on GIT I kinda got used to it, not that I’m in love with it by no means.

6

I host all of my code (private and public) on GitHub (now completely free - thanks Microsoft!). They have a super intuitive desktop client for using Git, merging, committing, branching, etc called GitHub Desktop (also free). Works on macOS and Windows. Can’t rate it highly enough and it’s free.

7

I like how GIT is integrated with Visual Studio Code

8

And Xcode and many other dev tools

9

Self.likesXcode = False

10

Oh, I understand that bug-tracking and VCS aren’t the same. But each is part of a development environment. What I like with fossil is how well they “integrate”. E.g. I can easily reference a bug report in a commit or vice versa. Or that wiki pages (also called tech-notes in fossil) can show up in the timeline.

With fossil these things come out of the box and I don’t have to dance around a bonfire at midnight on the third full moon after summer solstice to make things work.

I must admit, though, it has been many years that I’ve played around with SVN or Mercurial, so things will most likely have changed there, too.

11

For me it ranks right up there with VS :slight_smile:
take that however you want

12

Wouldn’t mind hearing your reasons for your dislike of VS And VSC, Norm. Feel free to start a new thread if you like.

13

I use Cornerstone/XVersion with SVN. My Xojo projects are in xml with external items. If I need to compare classes I use Arbed.

14

currently using GitHub Desktop with GitLab.