Best Project Management and Revision Control Software?

I'm planning to create a web server on my upcoming i7 computer this or next month. I want it to have a SVN for my current project.

I just want to know which is the best project management and revision control software? So far, I'm the only own who is coding on my graphics engine. Is it practical to have these softwares? Do I really need these piece of softwares?

Yeah, it sound lonely because I'm the only own and honestly, I can't find any reliable person to help me build my graphics engine.

Anyway, I have a list here but honestly I don't have any time to test all of these. So, I guess just tell me which one you used and tell me if it is good.

Comparison of project management software - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
List of revision control software - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thank you very much
Sarah22

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Originally Posted by sarah22

I just want to know which is the best project management and revision control software?

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What is best depends on your requirements. What do you need?

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Originally Posted by sarah22

So far, I'm the only own who is coding on my graphics engine. Is it practical to have these softwares? Do I really need these piece of softwares?

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You should use a revision control system even when working alone. I have my own preference as can be seen in my signature, but Subversion could well be fine for your purposes.

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You should use a revision control system even when working alone.

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Ditto. It's a life-saver when you need a quick backup, or when you need to undo all the changes you've made in the past couple of days

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Subversion could well be fine for your purposes

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It's pretty common, and very user-friendly - so it's a good first choice. As laserlight said, however, it depends on your needs. Based on what you've said though - it sounds like something simple like Subversion is all you need. If you're alone, there's no advantage to learning the new distributed systems, etc...

I kind of like Mercurial SCM with TortoiseHg

But have a look around and see what works best for you

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Originally Posted by sean

Ditto. It's a life-saver when you need a quick backup, or when you need to undo all the changes you've made in the past couple of days

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If you're unable to rebuild an older version of your software, then you're just goofing around, not doing real development.

O_o

WTF!?

If you'd rather do it by hand... screw it. If you'd rather do it by hand, you're an idiot.

Soma

There is always "MK-VCS":

tar -cjf version.0.1.tbz project/


This is not as full featured as the other options, but it is extremely easy and works just fine.

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Originally Posted by phantomotap

O_o

WTF!?

If you'd rather do it by hand... screw it. If you'd rather do it by hand, you're an idiot.

Soma

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Are you responding to me? Because that's the opposite of what I meant.

Let's try again.

If you're unable to rebuild an older version of your software, because you didn't have the foresight to use source control, then you're just goofing around, not doing real development.

Better?

If you don't need merge, Subversion is all you ever need really. Powerful, fast and use it with TortoiseSVN, if under windows, for added goodness. Subversion supports merging but it is crude, really.

If you need merge (typical if you work on two separate versions of your project and then later need to merge these), then I suggest Mercurial. Check Sean's link above for the GUI overlay.

If you want a real heavyweight then I suggest Git. For windows you will use the msysgit port. This is, everyone says, one of the best and most complete source control systems. But this is also... a difficult program to use, with a steep learning curve. Embrace yourself and think that you are doing it in the name of Science; you want to prove the world, mankind is able to complicate things way beyond necessary and still have it work for them.

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Are you responding to me? [...] Better?

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Yes. I've obviously misunderstood your post. I'm sorry for the confusion.

And. Yes. That's certainly clearer.

[Edit]
Oh. In my not-so-humble opinion, you are insane if you use CVS or SVN for a new project. Use Git, Bazaar, Mercurial, or whatever, but please stay away from CVS and SVN. Please. Pretty please!? ;_;
[/Edit]

Soma

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Originally Posted by phantomotap

[Edit]
Oh. In my not-so-humble opinion, you are insane if you use CVS or SVN for a new project. Use Git, Bazaar, Mercurial, or whatever, but please stay away from CVS and SVN. Please. Pretty please!? ;_;
[/Edit]

Soma

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I like to throw them off base a little bit by recommending RCS.

But seriously, I like Perforce. I know a lot of people hate it. I know it's commercial. But you can use it for free if you only have one or two developers.

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Originally Posted by Mario F.

If you don't need merge, Subversion is all you ever need really. Powerful, fast and use it with TortoiseSVN, if under windows, for added goodness. Subversion supports merging but it is crude, really.

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Are you serious? I've heard a lot of bad things about SVN but I've never heard that one. You can't merge? Who the hell would use it for anything?

Do you mean that it just sucks at resolving conflicts? Because IMHO, that's not a responsibility of a source control system in the first place -- you use an external resolver. Or do you mean that it cannot represent merges in the metadata?

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Originally Posted by brewbuck

Are you serious? I've heard a lot of bad things about SVN but I've never heard that one. You can't merge? Who the hell would use it for anything?

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Your question both confuses me and surprises me.

Confusion: What other bad things you heard about SVN? I can't honestly think of anything.

Surprise: Of course you can merge. I didn't say you couldn't. But you honestly didn't know about SVN merging limitations, most notably lack of proper rename support? Boy, you really don't want to perform a refactoring on a branch that results in file renaming under SVN.

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Originally Posted by phantomotap

Oh. In my not-so-humble opinion, you are insane if you use CVS or SVN for a new project. Use Git, Bazaar, Mercurial, or whatever, but please stay away from CVS and SVN. Please. Pretty please!? ;_;

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It's the "not-so-humble" there that tricked me into replying. What is so bad about SVN that makes you say people are insane using it? I've used nothing but SVN for the past 5 years and don't feel insane about it.

Now, I could migrate to Mercurial... and I'm thinking doing it... but there's really nothing fundamentally wrong about SVN. It's an excellent system.

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Originally Posted by Mario F.

Your question both confuses me and surprises me.

Confusion: What other bad things you heard about SVN? I can't honestly think of anything.

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Lack of proper overlay support is the biggest one that would impact me, personally.

Often during development, you might have multiple developers each working on some different enhancement or new feature. The enhancements may be limited to only a particular module, so you don't necessarily want to branch the entire tree, but only a portion of it. But you want to be able to overlay the smaller branch on top of the main line during development. This way, you track the changes on the main line as they occur, instead of having to reintegrate with the latest main line on a daily basis.

Furthermore, when it comes time to test the changes in combination, you may not want to merge back to the main line just yet. You want to overlay all of the enhancements on top of the main line and test them that way first, to avoid the need to back out a huge merge if things don't turn out the way you thought.

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Surprise: Of course you can merge. I didn't say you couldn't. But you honestly didn't know about SVN merging limitations, most notably lack of proper rename support? Boy, you really don't want to perform a refactoring on a branch that results in file renaming under SVN.

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You suggested using it, unless you required the ability to merge. I interpretted that to mean that you can't merge in any useful way, and from what I've heard, you can't, for the reasons you mention.

It's a big limitation, yes. Hence why I called it crude in its merging support. I do keep however separate branches on my projects (we also use subversion at work, but don't branch).

At home my one and only separate branch is were I keep my XML commented code, while the main trunk is stripped of that nonsense. I go around that limitation, when needed be, by simply merging the changed files individually first and then performing a final merge on the rest of the bulk. I can keep it under control.

However at work we are starting to feel the need to branch. Hence why I'm starting to look at other solutions. Mercurial is probably going to be choice. Not only for better merging, but also because we starting to feel a real need for a distributed system... and the changeset paradigm... well, we really are starting to feel the need for REAL source control. :p

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Originally Posted by phantomotap

[Edit]
Oh. In my not-so-humble opinion, you are insane if you use CVS or SVN for a new project. Use Git, Bazaar, Mercurial, or whatever, but please stay away from CVS and SVN. Please. Pretty please!? ;_;
[/Edit]

Soma

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That's moronic. What if you don't have a choice? And the "best" is whatever is most suited to the task and user. Plus you're forgetting it's one of the most widely used version control suites, which is one reason to use it (not because you're "following the pack") -- but for the same reason you pick standard libraries over some third-party library that does the same thing even if better (because of testing, documentation, training, etc)).

Well, sarah22 clearly has a choice, otherwise this whole thread is pointless. Distributed version control systems can replace centralised ones since they can be used like them, but not vice versa (at least not without a great deal of trouble).

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I like to throw them off base a little bit by recommending RCS.

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>_< Critical Hit!

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What is so bad about SVN that makes you say people are insane using it?

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There is something fundamentally wrong with a system that forces me to do monotonous micromanaging tasks by hand when such tasks may be managed by the system. I don't like to babysit! >_<

The SVN source has a few bugs that must not or can not be fixed for various historical reasons. (You can look at the handling for some text formats.) These bugs are rare, but when these bugs bite, they bite hard.

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What if you don't have a choice?

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Then whoever made the decision is insane. What are you not getting?

CVS is still used "everywhere". CVS is an extremely well documented, widely available legacy system. Are you going to apply the same logic to it?

Soma

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Originally Posted by phantomotap

>_< Critical Hit!



There is something fundamentally wrong with a system that forces me to do monotonous micromanaging tasks by hand when such tasks may be managed by the system. I don't like to babysit! >_<

The SVN source has a few bugs that must not or can not be fixed for various historical reasons. (You can look at the handling for some text formats.) These bugs are rare, but when these bugs bite, they bite hard.



Then whoever made the decision is insane. What are you not getting?

CVS is still used "everywhere". CVS is an extremely well documented, widely available legacy system. Are you going to apply the same logic to it?

Soma

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You don't present an argument at all. You're saying don't use "SVN because you don't have to"... What!? As you said CVS is a legacy system, SVN is not. And there is no reason to make it one. The other RCS suites may provide alternative ways of managing things, but you give no metric for "better" when describing RCS. There are undoubtedly bugs in the other "must have" RCS suites you mention, why make SVN an exception? At least you say they're known about and documented (and there are probably work arounds). Unless your RCS is completely transparent, you're going to be babysitting, get used to it.

O_o

You are very clearly attached to your choice of SVN. I can see that you have a different opinion than me. Fine. You have stated your opinion in answering the question at hand. Great. But! Stop trying to treat this as if it is an expression of a sound debate. You are not going to change my mind. I'm not trying to change yours. If you want to present an argument for choosing SVN, go for it.

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[Rant]
I refuse to babysit a tool. If a tool can't fulfill a contract, I'll get or build a different tool. If some tool fails me, I'll get or build a different tool. If a tool is outdated by virtue of advancements in technology, I'll get or build a different tool.

I'm not trying to bring anyone around to my way of thinking. I honestly don't care how you choose to do whatever you choose to do so long as I don't have to deal with it. Unfortunately for me, that is exactly what I'm often hired to do. I usually get hired to fix the mistakes other people make. I hate dealing with nonsense because of the insane magic of "legacy support". A flamethrower fixes a lot of problems faster than a scalpel.
[/Rant]
[/Edit]

Soma

Honestly, I don't know what I need. Someone just recommended me that I should use a revision control software like svn (the one he's using) so I can manage my codes better.

He also told me about Trac, Mantis, Bugzilla and Redmine which I found out a Project Management Software. Do this softwares also help me on my project?

Really..... I don't know what to say after reading this thread. :|

I guess I've used the wrong topic title. I don't intend to make a flame war thread. The word "Best", is like a bomb, really. lol

Thank you
Sarah

Just eeny, miny, moe between SVN or Mercurial. They are both easy to use and any of them will serve your needs. The fact you don't know what to use tells us that much.

SVN has the merge limitations (not that you know what that is at this point), but moving from SVN to Mercurial later, if needed be, is not difficult at all. So for all purposes, any of these will serve your purposes and they are both good tools.

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Originally Posted by sarah22

He also told me about Trac, Mantis, Bugzilla and Redmine which I found out a Project Management Software. Do this softwares also help me on my project?

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The first three are bug trackers. Redmine is project management software. Yes, they may help you with your project, but unlike version control the benefits tend to only appear when you have more developers and/or users. Incidentally, if you do decide to use Bazaar for version control, Launchpad would be a project hosting website that you might want to use. I consider Bazaar to be about as easy to use as Mercurial.

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Originally Posted by sarah22

Honestly, I don't know what I need. Someone just recommended me that I should use a revision control software like svn (the one he's using) so I can manage my codes better.

He also told me about Trac, Mantis, Bugzilla and Redmine which I found out a Project Management Software. Do this softwares also help me on my project?

Really..... I don't know what to say after reading this thread. :|

I guess I've used the wrong topic title. I don't intend to make a flame war thread. The word "Best", is like a bomb, really. lol

Thank you
Sarah

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Funny huh? If you posted a thread here asking for the "fruitiest flavour of jam" it would start a flamewar, so dont worry about it.

Oh, and touting Mercurial again: bitbucket.org is a free project hosting site that allows you to store revisions and gives you bug tracking.

The real answer is to have a go at a few and see what works for you. SVN, Mercurial, Bazaar, Git are all decent, open source with good support, so have a look and see what fits for you

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fruitiest flavour of jam

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IT! IS! GRAPE!

Soma

I wish people wouldn't call "flame war" every time there's a difference of opinions. Ruins the effect of real flame wars and quite frankly rarely we have those around these forums.

Maybe we should all just get along and agree in everything, right?

Ok here's what I did few days ago.

I tried searching about Git but I found out that it was really made for Linux. It has some port available but you'll noticed some slowdown and glitch. Because of poor support in other OS like windows and mac, I didn't bother installing it. Then, I saw mercurial around which has the best OS support which I think is good because of what it is really meant, to distribute source code around. After playing around with it, I'm going to try bazaar maybe tomorrow and see how good it is. :D

By the way, I installed mercurial and redmine on my ubuntu 10.04 on vmware and found out that hamachi doesn't support linux anymore. The latest version I saw was around 2007. :o

So, what I plan now is, I'll just register on those free source code repository around the net. Which I think is much better than having it on my home then connect it via hamachi. And using redmine alone on my network is kinda stupid, that's what I think.

Does sourceforge support mercurial? I heard that they don't have forks so they just go to bitbucket instead. What's fork anyway?

I want my project to be in private right now. I'll might make it public after finishing most of the important stuffs.

Thank you
Sarah

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Originally Posted by sarah22

I tried searching about Git but I found out that it was really made for Linux. It has some port available but you'll noticed some slowdown and glitch.

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You mean msysgit? I'm unsure as to what type of program you are developing that shows a slowdown while using this. I never noticed.

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So, what I plan now is, I'll just register on those free source code repository around the net. Which I think is much better than having it on my home then connect it via hamachi. And using redmine alone on my network is kinda stupid, that's what I think.

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Err... I'm not sure what you want to do. Hamachi? Can you even connect to sourceforge through hamachi? And why would you want to do that?

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Does sourceforge support mercurial?

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Yes.

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Originally Posted by Mario F.

You mean msysgit? I'm unsure as to what type of program you are developing that shows a slowdown while using this. I never noticed.

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Really? Most of the threads I read around said that windows support is poor. They noticed this and that. Ok, I'll try it also and see how good it is. :D

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Originally Posted by Mario F.

Err... I'm not sure what you want to do. Hamachi? Can you even connect to sourceforge through hamachi? And why would you want to do that?

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No no no. I'm using hamachi because I want to connect to my home server when I'm in school or anywhere.

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Originally Posted by Mario F.

Yes.

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Have you ever heard about forking?

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Have you ever heard about forking?

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They don't go to bitbucket.
Mercurial – sourceforge

As for forks, Here.

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Originally Posted by sarah22

Then, I saw mercurial around which has the best OS support which I think is good because of what it is really meant, to distribute source code around.

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Git probably has the largest user base among Bazaar, Git and Mercurial. Bazaar has a Git plugin, which ironically means that you have less reason to use Bazaar since Bazaar users can access Git repositories. Nonetheless, if you actually want to distribute your unstable code to the largest possible user base, you should publish say, nightly builds in source form extracted from whatever is the version control system. That way, people will not complain that they have to install a tool that they don't use.

Great idea laserlight! :D

About Git, I tried playing around with it and TortoiseGit today. Some said it is really slow but I didn't experience any. I found it really stable and I started liking it.

What disappoints me was the integration with visual studio 2010 plugin which is the Git Extension. I don't know why I hate it maybe because of the lame gui + the cow logo, really. It would be probably great if they just made it just like the visualhg that has some icon thingy in the solution explorer to distinguish which file was updated, modified or etc.

One problem I found also was when I commit for the first time and look at the history. It shows this.

http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/1914/51349141.jpg

I tried looking at tortoisegit's log and didn't found this error.

So, I might just play around customizing the visual studio toolbars? and if I found any way how to put those icon thingy like those that shows in explorer, I might make my own plugin for my own use. If only VisualSVN or some simple like VisualHg release their codes.

Thank you
Sarah22

EDIT: I found this one which I think is the best solution for my problem right now. http://kurtschindler.net/blog/catego...al-Studio.aspx