Sleep Overrated - Scott Cowan

Have you ever had a job where they don’t have source control? There may be some good excuses but you're still missing one of best tools you can have. Today I'll show you how to setup source control in under a minute without a server.

It can be daunting looking at Subversion when you think that you need to setup a server with it but thats not the case. You can use TortoiseSVN to create a server-less repository. I don't recommend this setup but it gives a way to try out Subversion or a quick way of setting up a source control system. The best thing about this is that you can copy the repository to a full subversion server when you have one. If you like using subversion I recommend Visual SVN Server on windows.

Reasons to use this setup

1. You want to try out subversion.
2. You want source control but don't have the time to set it up.
3. You do all your work disconnected.
   

Reasons to use a server instead

1. You will probably run into problems when two people are trying to checkin files at the same time.
2. You want to remotely access the source control.

How To Setup

Here's how you can use TortoiseSVN to create a repository without a server.

1. Download and install TortoiseSVN
2. Create a directory for all your repositories (I called mine c:\repositories)
3. Create a directory for this repository (I called mine sample)
4. Create your first repository (by going into the sample dir and right click)

5. Use a FSFS file system (its just a recommendation)

6. You should see some folders (conf,dav,db,hooks,locks)

7. Create a network share folder (right click on c:\repositories)

8. Make sure the share has write access

9. Checkout the repository to another directory (right click on any dir)

10. Fill in “Url of repository”  (the url to a network share which looks like this file:////computername/repos)
11. Fill in the checkout directory  (the dir doesn’t have to exist yet it will ask if it should create it for you)

Summary

You now know how to setup subversion on your local file system. TortoiseSVN commands can be found in the right click context where you found the Checkout and Create Repository here options, just make sure you are click in or on the folder you checked out. Here’s some links that will help you get started.

• VisualSVN for Visual Studio
• TortoiseSVN Tutorial

Technorati tags subversion svn programming