A Journey With Source Code Control , Visual Studio + SVN

Free + work out of the box + ease of use this is the hard equation that I always try to solve in my work and Subversion ( SVN ) solves it for me .

I used to work alone in many projects I worked as analyst, developer, tester and some times the user :) , I always used to keep copy of my work files in other location like flash drive , external HD or on my Email or my web hosting . I do this nearly every day so I can continue working from home or while traveling ... also this helped me to keep history of my code as some time new modifications makes thing worst and when this happen and I found that I have the previous version I take my breath and say thanks God :)

Now I am working in many many projects and responsible for whole IT department , the big problem I faced is that I need to maintain history of our code and documents and make this systematic . while I already know about MS Source Safe and the new product Team System I decide to make my search around the Internet to make the right decision and it was easy Subversion is my needed answer because I want something free and works out of the box with Visual Studio ( 2008 , 2010 ) and also support any document visioning not just the code file .

What I have done to setup my SVN server and clients ?

First , I downloaded Visual SVN Server ( SVN Server for Windows ) and install it on my server ( this can be your local machine ) and created my first repository




Second , I downloaded TortoiseSVN ( to work with SVN from you windows explorer ) and ankhsvn ( plugin for MS Visual Studio )

after installing TortoiseSVN this menu appear when I right click in any explorer window ( from this menu you can browse your repository and make check-in/Out so easily for any folder )



while after installing Ankhsvn you can make this directly from Visual Studio




I really loved SVN so far , it solve my equation ( Free + work out of the box + ease of use )