Forums | MacLife
You are not logged in.
#1 2007-09-21 9:54 am
tracking changes in a large corporate site
my new company wants me to use MS Visual Safe Source for "versioning" the Intranet and Internet sites. having been a user of standalone FTP clients and Dreamweaver, i'm wondering if MS VSS (ugh) is overkill. seems like this would be better suited to developing standalone software apps than tracking changes in a web site, right? besides Dreamweaver/Contribute has a rollback feature anyway.
i'm just starting to get the feeling that i'm being hazed by a couple of Microsofties and that VSS will in no way make my life simpler.
anyone else encountered a situation where VSS was used to track changes in a large site?
b
ps - i should add that none of the previous webmasters EVER used versioning of any kind. so i'm starting at 1.0. or .1. or whatever. seems unnecessary and tedious. which seems to really get Microsofties excited.
"The Fates lead he who will; he who won't, they drag." - Seneca
Offline
#3 2007-09-21 11:01 am
Re: tracking changes in a large corporate site
agreed. but is a Microsoft app that's years old a good solution? there have to be better ways to do this. maybe a wiki?
"The Fates lead he who will; he who won't, they drag." - Seneca
Offline
#4 2007-09-21 11:11 am
- Booksley
- Zombie Genocidest
- From: Toronto, Ontario
- Registered: 2001-02-16
- Posts: 5039
Re: tracking changes in a large corporate site
No, you need version control software. Personally, I use subversion, but VSS would probably work fine too. Especially since you're the only developer.
Offline
#5 2007-09-21 11:48 am
Re: tracking changes in a large corporate site
http://bazaar-vcs.org/
maybe?
"The Fates lead he who will; he who won't, they drag." - Seneca
Offline
#6 2007-09-21 1:30 pm
- user
- Your plastic pal who's fun to be with
- From: I'm not getting you down, am I
- Registered: 2001-10-15
- Posts: 16035
Re: tracking changes in a large corporate site
AHHHH! OPEN SOURCE!
The hex of the microsofties!
Aw, he's no fun, he fell right over.
Unless you become as little children, there's no way you will believe this crap.
Offline
#7 2007-09-21 2:49 pm
- Light Speed
- Doubter of Einstein
- Registered: 2002-08-17
- Posts: 3694
Re: tracking changes in a large corporate site
Just tell them that VSS isn't compatible with web 2.0 
Offline
#8 2007-09-21 6:33 pm
- Booksley
- Zombie Genocidest
- From: Toronto, Ontario
- Registered: 2001-02-16
- Posts: 5039
Re: tracking changes in a large corporate site
b_dubb wrote:
http://bazaar-vcs.org/
maybe?
Maybe, yes. However, I'd be hesitant to use a product that hasn't had a 1.0 release yet for a huge company website.
Offline
#10 2007-09-21 11:03 pm
Re: tracking changes in a large corporate site
I see Subversion as being the most pointless project ever started. The slogan of Subversion for a while was "CVS done right", or something like that, and if you start with that kind of slogan, there's nowhere you can go. There is no way to do CVS right.
—Linus Torvalds
I kid. Subversion is right for a lot of projects, but whether or not it works for you depends on your team's development style. SVN is just fine, but lately I've been liking Mercurial, which like Bazaar is a distributed SCM system.
Maybe start here and figure out what would work best for you.
Offline
#11 2007-09-22 12:25 am
- Booksley
- Zombie Genocidest
- From: Toronto, Ontario
- Registered: 2001-02-16
- Posts: 5039
Re: tracking changes in a large corporate site
Miles wrote:
I see Subversion as being the most pointless project ever started. The slogan of Subversion for a while was "CVS done right", or something like that, and if you start with that kind of slogan, there's nowhere you can go. There is no way to do CVS right.
—Linus TorvaldsI kid. Subversion is right for a lot of projects, but whether or not it works for you depends on your team's development style. SVN is just fine, but lately I've been liking Mercurial, which like Bazaar is a distributed SCM system.
Maybe start here and figure out what would work best for you.
Yeah, there's different version control software for different needs. I think me and Scott use Subversion as a personal VCS system, so it works great for us. The distributed SCM systems (git being the only one I know) are for a far larger userbase.
So yeah, explore your options.
Offline
#12 2007-09-22 3:12 am
Re: tracking changes in a large corporate site
Seeing the name Linus Torvalds under that quote sparks a reaction in me similar to that some people have when seeing Wikipedia quoted.
Just sayin'.
,xtG
.tsooJ
Offline
#13 2007-09-22 9:51 am
Re: tracking changes in a large corporate site
Booksley wrote:
Yeah, there's different version control software for different needs. I think me and Scott use Subversion as a personal VCS system, so it works great for us. The distributed SCM systems (git being the only one I know) are for a far larger userbase.
Distributed systems can have some advantages over centralized repository systems, even when there's only one person working on a project. Probably not enough to make the switch over if you're comfortable working with SVN, but if you want to try something new, Mercurial is very much worth a look.
Offline
#14 2007-09-22 9:51 am
Re: tracking changes in a large corporate site
Alien wrote:
Seeing the name Linus Torvalds under that quote sparks a reaction in me similar to that some people have when seeing Wikipedia quoted.
Well, for the sake of those people, I should disclose that I got that Torvalds quote from Wikipedia.
Offline
#15 2007-09-22 11:42 pm
Re: tracking changes in a large corporate site
SVN is pretty much the only thing I have used for years (after upgrading from CVS). At various places I have used it on some very huge projects, both internally and externally. For personal projects I use an app called Chronosync.
It works great for small and large projects and has great integration many apps and other dev tools like Trac, Jira, etc... I haven't tried anything else really, but I haven't really found a need.
That Linus quote is kinda lame. He doesn't like CVS so he bags on SVN. Weak. Version control is a necessity. SVN is an improvement over CVS. Maybe there is a larger context to that quote.
Offline
#16 2007-09-23 12:03 am
Re: tracking changes in a large corporate site
I just looked at Mercurial, and it looks nice for sure. But I don't see a massively compelling reason to switch if SVN is your embedded tool. Performance and size are nice for sure, but even if SVN was half the speed it is now, it really wouldn't be a big deal. Hell, I use it remotely quite often, and that is just dog slow, but still, it doesn't impact my production flow. If am working on the same file as another user, at most I will commit about every 30mins or so. Other than that it is only a handful of times a day at best. And drive space is cheap.
I dunno, with the exception of personal use, it is just one of those things I don't think of much, SVN works as designed and doesn't annoy me. Those are my two big requirements for workflow tool. Granted, not high expectations, but so few meet those minimal requirements.
Offline
#17 2007-09-25 7:27 am
- W2ttsy
- Member
- Registered: 2002-03-04
- Posts: 3294
Re: tracking changes in a large corporate site
I'm also using SVN (we moved from Source Safe) at work, and apart from some errors which have no real meaning, its pretty awesome, plus we have JIRA integration for change requests.
I will probably adopt this for serious personal projects as well. I will look at mercurial too though.
W2ttsy
punk! 
modding is for rich smurfs, hacking is for pov asses like me
Offline
