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DaveR
10-Jul-2020, 08:58 AM
DAW please move this if its in the wrong forum.

Frank’s posting about Azure Devops caused me to look again at GIT, specifically the Azure stuff. I also worked back through all the other GIT stuff I’ve looked at over the years. I have to say, for us it doesn’t seem like a good fit.

We are three corporate developers, all working in-office, so always on the network. A single SVN repo therefore is usually available.

everybody ‘gets’ subversion within minutes of installing TortoiseSVN.

I’m notoriously cheap, so evaluation always has to be with the free level of whatever we are looking at. We don’t have a repo of less than 2Gb and migrations To GITHub, Azure and GITLAB all failed.

I host our SVN on a Dreamhost server (10 years+) where I have other sites, so no fees involved and it’s mine to manage/backup/restore. Migrating to GIT on that also failed though I was too lazy on that day to chase down the error.

I fancy a better integrated project/task management system, and some of the GIT-based oferings have that.
I also (personally) fancy distributed repositories and staging, though they might be a tough sell to my team as they both have operations backgrounds, not a developer past. However retirement may eventually creep up and I want something that will cary them forward.

so, as the meme says. Change my mind!

enjoyed yesterdays UK group zoom. Nice to see all the (old,) old faces and hope everyone is doing okay.

Stephen W. Meeley
10-Jul-2020, 10:48 AM
I was wondering how long this would take after the blog posted.

When it comes to source control, about the only thing everyone can agree upon is that using something (almost anything) is the key issue. IMHO, trying to convince developers to switch from one system to another is not the fundamental intention of the blog.

So, if you are out there and not yet using source control, grab some popcorn and a refreshing adult beverage, see how the debates unfold here, find solid comparison information (https://stackshare.io/stackups/git-vs-mercurial-vs-svn) (there is a ton of it out there), pick what you think will work best and put it in place.

Let the games begin! :cool:

Stephen W. Meeley
10-Jul-2020, 11:02 AM
Dave,

For lack of a better alternative, I've moved this to the DataFlex Hangout...

DaveR
10-Jul-2020, 11:29 AM
I considered that, but as I don't check that daily myself I thought I'd leave it to the pros. Anyway, fire away...

Michael Mullan
10-Jul-2020, 11:50 AM
Dave,

I keep all my stuff in Kiln (https://www.fogbugz.com/version-control), which is a git based private repository. it costs about $20/ month for up to 5 developers. (I think) for a few dollars more you can add in a substantial Issue tracking system to tie together cases reported,and toe work done to address them.

In this world nothing is free, and if you're not paying for the product, you ARE the product. So I have no difficulty justifying $240 / year to cover the cost of maintaining and running an off-site backup of all my source. GIT can be a ferocious pain, but it's saved my butt more times than I care to admit.

The more beneficial use cases for git allow for keeping an entirely separate sandbox to do new development in, while also being able to make smaller bug-fixes in the production branch. Changes pushed tot eh production branch can be easily rolled back put if there are problems..

Kiln also comes with a pretty web-based GUI that papers over most of the command line strangeness in GIT.

that's my 2 cents.

/MM

Stephen W. Meeley
10-Jul-2020, 11:55 AM
For the curious, here at DAW we use a combination of Jira, Bitbucket, Tower and Jenkins (the build server).

As a long-time Vault user, and a tad of an "old dog", I'll admit that getting used to Git has been more than a little frustrating for me.

But as I get used to the seamless integration between Jira and Bitbucket and how fast it is to change branches to work on different things without getting all discombobulated, I'm a believer.

chuckatkinson
10-Jul-2020, 12:06 PM
I think I've used most source controls system from VisualSourceSafe (early version of Vault), SVN and now GIT.

For the budget minded, you can get a full bitbucket server from Atlassian for $10 for up to 5 (?) developers. Requires a server and MSSQL.

You can use the free GIT client from Atlassian. If you attended Dennis's great training at DISD it's called SourceTree. There is also TortoiseGIT available as well.

We use SmartGIT. It's easy but not free.

DaveR
10-Jul-2020, 01:13 PM
Thanks for the comments so far, keep them coming!

I totally get GIT for distributed teams like DAW, not so much when the three of us are a few desks apart, and work off-site is usually via RemotePC into the office desktops. Our use of SVN is highly limited. We don't branch, we talk to each other and stay out of the way. Low-tech, just like me.:cool:

I'm thinking I may have to take an axe to our historical commits to get a repo of a reasonable size to test. Or rather, clone the main repo and take an axe to that one...

Dennis Piccioni
10-Jul-2020, 01:44 PM
Like Stephen said, at least you are using source control! I quite often speak to developers who don't, and they are missing out on a really important development technique, and they often don't realize it until they try it.

Git buys you a lot more than being able to work in a distributed fashion, we were able to do that with Vault already. The biggest game change with git is branching and the flexibility. Even if you get the idea of this by reading about it, you really don't "get it" until you try to use it and it's just fantastic.

However, switching to git IS a change and it will take some getting used to. THAT may be the most expensive part of switching. IMO that expense is well worth it in the long run.

wila
10-Jul-2020, 05:05 PM
Dave,

If you're using TortoiseSVN now then using TortoiseGit is probably the least painful. At least when running your own git repository.
You still need to read a bit how it works though.

When using hosted git with tools such as GitLab, GitHub, BitBucket or SourceHut you can take advantage of their web interfaces.
They all offer more features on top of that which help with the integration.

Also note that the DataFlex wiki has a section about source code control:

https://dataflex.wiki/index.php?title=Category:Version_Control

--
Wil

seanyboy
11-Jul-2020, 05:12 AM
I think the biggest thing in Git's favour is its ubiquity. New hires are going to be more likely to have used Git; It's increasingly harder to get non-git hosting; documentation and help on the internet is easier to find for Git.

It's hard for people with tooling and repositories around subversion to move over, but I think the longer you put it off, the more likely it'll be that you have to do it and the harder it'll ultimately be.

chuckatkinson
11-Jul-2020, 09:56 AM
I found a SVN Mirror plug-in for Bitbucket that I used to migrate from SVN hosted to our own Bitbucket hosted. It was easy.

DaveR
11-Jul-2020, 10:27 AM
all good info. Keep it coming.

phvwijk
11-Jul-2020, 01:51 PM
Do not know who all are using Vault.

But some time ago this ink. Never tried it.

https://www.roelvanlisdonk.nl/2015/12/17/convert-sourcegear-vault-standard-v3-1-9-to-git-including-all-history/

Peter

DaveR
15-Jul-2020, 11:27 AM
Svnadmin dump takes a while....
Decision is to restructure our repository and 'break' it into smaller ones. Because we've always thrown stuff into each new DF release we've always had a complete new repo top level folder for each release. Not as much goes into releases nowadays. We'll move to a single code base but different programs folders and libraries. Seems like it should reduce the whole thing to a manageable size. Then maybe we can play with GIT.