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Version Control |
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Why version control? |
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TeamworkYou work in a team. You open a file and start work on it. Your colleague opens a file and starts working on it. You save your version, satisfied with your work. You shut down your machine and go home. Your colleague saves her version. Only it happened to be her version of the file you just saved your version of before going home. Your version has just disappeared into nothing. You were quite satisfied with something that no longer exists. If you have a version control system, when you start work on a file, it can be locked so your colleague cannot make changes at the same time. If your colleague saves a version, you'll know about it. And you'll still be able to get the previous version back. ClientsYou just spent several weeks on a that version of your client's website and present it to him. And your client is not happy. Could we go back to the previous one, please and restart from there? If you regularly make backups, all the files are still there - somewhere... But which files on which backups? How do you put it all together again? If you have a version control system, you can simply check out the previous version of your whole project and start over.Teams of oneOops! You know it happens. Press the save button too soon. Of course HomeSite supports undo across saves, but not across sessions. How many backups do you make each day? But you really need that previous version... and you have to rely on your memory? Even if you work in a team of one, if you develop software (and websites are software), especially if you develop software for others, you will
soon find you need version control. To store whole sets of files at milestones - so you can get back the whole set of corresponding files. To track
progress. To develop different versions on the basis of one previous one.
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ColdFusion Studio |
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The good newsColdFusion Studio 3.1 already supports the SCCI (Source Code Control Interface) so you can integrate it with products that also support this, like Microsoft's Visual SourceSafe or Merant's PVCS (previously from Intersolv). But it also comes with a bundled application StarBase Versions, which may be all you need for version control. The good news is that not only version 4+ of ColdFusion Studio continues to support these, but version 4+ of HomeSite supports the SCC interface as well. That is really great news if you already own one of the version control products conforming to this interface: you will now be able to use it with HomeSite as well. The not-so-good newsThe not-so-good new is that the project system in HomeSite 4.0 is rather fundamentally changed to enable this integration. Those who were used to its ability to logically group files together will be disappointed: projects are now tightly tied to physical directories. If you don't use or need version control, you'll lose this ability to define logical work sets of files without getting something equivalent back. You already have directories to organize your work. But Allaire was listening to those who really want logical work sets, so in versions 4.5+ of these produtcs the project system was be improved to allow 'virtual' folders again. If, on the other hand, you do need version control but don't use ColdFusion, you no longer will need to buy ColdFusion just to be able to use integrated version control. So even if you still need to buy that version control system, you may save some money by using HomeSite instead of ColdFusion Studio if you don't use ColdFusion anyway. Most of these version control systems don't come cheap, though. To give you a rough idea: MS Visual SourceSafe 6.0 is about $550 for the full product, $280 for a competitive upgrade (and that's if you live in the USA - elsewhere software prices usually are higher). MKS do not even list prices of their source control.products on their web site any more (guess what that means for affordability for individuals and small teams). Merant's PVCS Version Manager (only) is about $650 (again, in the US). (Prices are just an indication; you'll have to ask your own software supplier for exact pricing.) The best newsSo packages like the ones mentioned above integrate with ColdFusion Studio and HomeSite (as of version 4) as well. But they may have a lot of features that you don't really need. Or they may be simply too expensive - especially in comparison to the price of HomeSite. The really good news is, there is an inexpensive version control system that can be integrated simply with HomeSite (or ColdFusion Studio - see below!): it's a version of GNU RCS (Revision Control System) for the 32-bit Windows platform. With an easy to use GUI, and quite powerful features. It may be all you need. It works on networks, and supports both Unix and Windows file formats and can translate between them transparently. It can handle not only text files, but binary files as well, so you can integrate version control for all your web pages, images and documentation. And its pricing is nowhere near that of the heavy-weights: for personal use it's even free (though a registration, $75, will give you benefits). For small work groups it's still cheap, a lot cheaper than any of the other products. The product is called CS-RCS and it's made by ComponentSoftware. And here comes the best news of all: while it now also support a the SCC interface (enabling that type of integration with HomeSite and Studio, it also has a simple command-line interface which enables integration with a lot of development products, like Delphi or Visual C++ or Visual Basic. HomeSite and UltraEditBecause of this simple command-line interface, CS-RCS can even be integrated with HomeSite 3.01, unlike any of the other tools! It keeps getting better: All you need is to get and download the package - I've already created the toolbar for you that takes care of the integration. Because the basic command-line interface is so simple, that proved to be quite easy to do for the most important commands. And that small toolbar is all you need (apart from CS-RCS, of course) to be able to handle file-level and directory-level source control from within HomeSite! And since I know that many HomeSite users use UltraEdit-32 as well, especially for those tasks that HomeSite still cannot do, I've created a similar integration help for UltraEdit-32. So what about ColdFusion Studio?Guess what: ColdFusion Studio users have reported they actually prefer CS-RCS. Yes, this simple command-line interface (and the toolbars I created for it) works great with ColdFusion Studio as well. But why would anyone prefer it to what's already available with CFS? Although ColdFusion Studio comes with Versions, you may find you actually prefer CS-RCS because:
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Get started now! |
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ComponentSoftware RCS
Ready to try version control? The first thing to do is to get CS-RCS. It comes with a good help system, which includes a getting started tutorial which I suggest you work through to familiarize yourself with the program and the concepts used. It will only take 15 minutes or so. Also read through the help pages about projects; if you maintain more than one web site, you'll want to use these. If you've never worked with a version control system before, give yourself some time to get familiar with it. And you may find you want to use it or other things than web development (your Office documents, for example, or images, since CS-RCS does not limit itself to text-only documents). Integration with Homesite and ColdFusion StudioThe next page contains all of the files and instructions for integration of CS-RCS with both HomeSite 3.01 and HomeSite 4.0. This same integration will work just as well with the corresponding versions of ColdFusion Studio. There are separate sets of files and instructions for versions 3.x and 4.x or later, because the toolbars and the files that define them have changed a little for version 4.0. Ready? Then go to the CS-RCS integration page, download the files, and follow a few simple instructions. Integration with UltraEdit-32The CS-RCS integration page also contains a package for UltraEdit, so you can get access to the same CS-RCS
functions from within UltraEdit as you can from Homesite and ColdFusion Studio!
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Links |
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Here are links to manufacturers of the version control systems I mentioned above (in alphabetical order by manufacturer): |
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