Using SCM for Spectrum projects
I wonder if anyone use SCM ( CVS, SVN, GIT etc. ) for Zx Spectrum projects.
It may seem as overkill for a small project but my friend argue that with SCM he changes code more agresively as he knows there is easy way to rollback.
So what you do ?
It may seem as overkill for a small project but my friend argue that with SCM he changes code more agresively as he knows there is easy way to rollback.
So what you do ?
Post edited by catmeows on
Comments
Well actually I have never used it, neither for Spectrum nor professionally.
Some people told me that it is very useful but it was always enough for me just to make manually a backup of my files on a pendrive (in case my hard disk failed) every few days.
I use the free version of TFS
http://www.visualstudio.com/en-gb/products/visual-studio-online-basic-vs
GIT appears to be the de facto standard now and as TFS supports GIT I get best of both worlds, I certainly wouldn't use anything other than one of these two.
I use the same for my Windows/WP/Windows Store projects. I've not used anything for Spectrum code yet, but would like to eventually. Saying that, backing up the data to multiple places (pendrive/online/another HDD) tends to work fine at the moment.
Before I make any serious changes to a block of code I copy it to notepad, then alter the
real code, if it fails to work then the original code can be copy/paste back in and resaved.
Download the latest version of Bomb Munchies Ver2210 4th July 2020
Version control tools always seem to me more trouble than they're worth - especially the one we have at work. I seem to spend more time faffing about with raising and closing task numbers for checking in updates than I do writing code.
- IONIAN-GAMES.com -
Thing is, they get progressively more complex and fiddly when more people are working on code together as you have to handle all those things, but they're also essential to avoid everyone just breaking everything with every change. Imagine the chaos if a huge 10 million line project was being edited off one copy of source and backed up to zip every now and then :lol:
For a small project with one or maybe a couple of developers you don't need to use every feature of the system. Just check in changes often and with reasonably detailed commit messages and 90% of the time it's just an easy way of keeping incremental backups that involves so little effort you can do it as often as you recompile.
The great advantage comes when you break something but aren't sure why, or you realise you've gone down a blind alley somewhere and have all the tools to do diffs of different revisions of source etc at your fingertips.
Intro to Mercurial: http://hginit.com/
Tortoise Hg: http://tortoisehg.bitbucket.org/
BitBucket: https//bitbucket.org
If that's the case, you are either using CVS/SVN at work and not Git, and/or your work's branch model is dreadful.
A good branch model and Git would make your life so much easier, and also protect you from mistakes and wasting valuable time, if it doesn't then the VCS is inadequate and/or the branch model is wrong.
Git is an order of magnitude better than SVN, make the change! For private repos BitBucket is free, Github is obviously free for public ones, and if you don't like the command line try something like SourceTree (obviously only if you have Windows/Mac).
For anyone who writes any code, and doesn't use a VCS, just ask yourself the following questions and if you answer yes to any of them you should spend a short amount of time learning the basics of Git and you'll never go back...
Yep, Yep, Yep, Yep, Yep, Yep, Yep, Yep, and Yep, :D hehe
Um, No :p
I might use Git for future projects, maybe. I'm not changing everything from a system that works find for no reason though that's mental.
I run my own subversion server, I would do the same for Git. I have TortoiseSVN and TortoiseGit installed on this PC for shell integration etc.
I certainly agree that using version control of some sort is a must, it just makes everything easier. I used to think the same way as some people commenting here do and kept everything with multiple datestamped folders and zips because that was "easier".
I installed SVN to check out the spectranet sources and realised what a fool I'd been to dismiss the idea before :)
I do use SVN and ClearCase at work, so if I ever needed to I'd use SVN out of familiarity.
B
zx-diagnostics - Fixing ZX Spectrums in the 21st Century (wiki)
Sinclair FAQ Wiki
Bytes:Chuntey - Spectrum tech blog.