Efficient Working in a Team: Subversion-Repository

In the next days I will tell you about three habits, which increase our productivity:

  • Using a Subversion-Repository
  • Using a team-forum for communication
  • Using textfiles instead of binary data

Subversion Repository:

Wikipedia says:

Apache Subversion (often abbreviated SVN, after the command name svn) is a software versioning and revision control system distributed as free software under the Apache License.[1] Developers use Subversion to maintain current and historical versions of files such as source code, web pages, and documentation. Its goal is to be a mostly compatible successor to the widely used Concurrent Versions System (CVS).“

We use a central server in our intitute, in which the svn-server is installed. All our project data the data is being stored there (including history).

To use the system on a certain computer for the first time, we „check a working copy out“, which means all the data from the server will be transmitted to a local directory on our PC.

Now we can work with the data until we want to finish our working day. In that case we commit our data to the server. There is one fact, which increases the speed of the transmission: Only the differences will be transmitted. E.g. you work on a whole book with tousands of pages and only change a comma, then only one line will be transmitted.

If you want to start your new working day, first you have to update your working-copy. Same as above – only the differences in the files will be transmitted. If you nwork with textfiles the update procedure will only last a few seconds.

The server will store all revisions until the storage is full. So e.g. I want the status of our SED from a certain time on a certain day, that’s no problem.

If you are interested in this software, visit:

http://svnbook.red-bean.com/