The Simplest Version Control System - Subversion
Infrastructure, Open Source October 23rd. 2007, 10:15pm
While listening to the popular audio show DotNetRocks a couple of years ago, one of the guests mentioned a great up and coming version control system that had the potential to steal some thunder from the ever popular open source version control system CVS.  The system was called SubVersion (SVN) and has several client interfaces that are available to interact with it. I ended up doing some experimenting with it and was amazed at the simplicity of how it worked and how intuitive the interface was. We have been using this system internally for over two years now.
I had experimented in the past with CVS and some other commercially available packages at some clients I had worked at, but these systems were all hard to get setup and work with and some of them were very expensive. It just didn’t make logical sense a lot of times. That’s where SVN is so very different.Â
The premise of SVN is you install a repository on a central machine. This repository has its own database structure and serves as the place where files of any type can be versioned and stored with markup describing the changes.Â
You then use a wide assortment of client interface tools that interact with the repository across the network or the internet. We have been using TortoiseSVN as the interface at Tradewinds. It is a very simple shell extension that adds a right click menu to windows. This is how you check things in and out, all by right clicking files or directories.
You can click this link over at CodeProject for a great article with some screenshots detailing how the system works in addition to getting an idea of the options for tying it into Visual Studio.Â
Using version control adds all kinds of benefits, particularly when you have multiple people working on the same projects over a period of time. It allows you to revert code back and to not have to worry about keeping track of versions by hand, not to mention it is a nice way to document a change you make so that when you go back a few weeks later you know exactly who did what to what piece of code. Here’s a more in depth article that outlines some of the reasons you’d want to leverage a version control system.
If your company is writing code today, and it is not version controlled, you need to take a few minutes to ponder the benefits of taking a few minutes and implementing a version control system for checking your changes in and out of.
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2 Responses to “The Simplest Version Control System - Subversion”
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October 25th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
I would be interested in hearing about any applications you have designed or are considering designing to incorporate VoIP into your business applications. I see this as a great way to remove extra steps and improve productivity. For example, imagine a dispatcher clicking on a customer icon or link and dialing a customer up automatically, with a pop up screen appearing showing the status of all that customer’s loads in progress, the value of the customer, his past orders, etc… Are you working on any things of this nature?
October 25th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
Yes we have integrated our VoIP system into some of our existing applications and yes we have some future plans as well. I have some posts planned around both our VoIP system and some of the applications which leverage it.
What we have already done is integrated it into our maintenance application so someone can highlight a block of text, and with 1 click dial a phone number contained within the text. This saves a few seconds here and there dialing which is handy.
We also have integrated a real-time feed from our phone system into a tool we call the multiplexor (which will also be blogged about in a coming article).
The multiplexor is a modular tool that we display on a 250″ screen in our operations center. It has all kinds of good information streamed from our systems. One of the feeds is information about call volumes graphed out over the course of the day by call queue. We also tie in so that you see average on hold statistics for calls by queue and when one or more callers are on hold, it changes over to display the longest wait time for callers in that queue. This way our operations group can simply look up and see a big bold counter showing when someone is on hold so they can try to wrap up their current call.
And finally, we have done some other things with the phone system such as integrate it into our intranet. We have a building security page on our intranet where we see web cams throughout our building in addition to the ability to tie into the building security system. We tied into the phone system to allow us to unlock the front-door. This is nice if you’re in the office by yourself and you need to let someone in…or better yet, you forgot your key card and need access to the building, you can pop open the intranet site and click the “unlock door” button and voila!
We are doing a major upgrade of our phone system next summer which I’m excited about. One of the new features is that they are moving from a traditional COM API to a .NET API which will make it even easier to consume and leverage the services the system has to offer. We intend to integrate screen pops with this version of the application.
We have been on a VoIP system leveraging soft phones for over 2 years now and it has been a great investment. There are a plethora of benefits which I’ve got some good content to support in a future post. Stay tuned…