On 08/10/12 13:08, Chris Walker wrote:
I'm still trying to write a program for my phone but I've already got lots of versions of it spread over various filesystems.
My son has suggested that I use git and I see that there's an installable version for Mandriva. But before I go ahead and install it, is there anything I should know?
I'm not particularly interested in storing the my source code online so I would like to have everything local, either on this 'ere machine or perhaps on a NAS drive. Is this the best approach though?
Hi,
I've used CVS, SVN/Subversion, Perforce and Git and have to say that I really like Git, once I got my mindset off the SVN style (I liked Perforce too, but that's most definitely not free). I'm using it with no issues on Mandriva and Kubuntu for both local and remote repositories.
The potential advantage of hosting it on your NAS box would simply be that it's inherently backed-up (although one of the nice things about Git is that you can simply rsync a Git repo from one place to another and you've got a complete working copy, history 'n' all). Git's also built to work much better off-line (certainly compared to, say, SVN), so you're not blocked by choosing to host your "main" repo on your NAS if it's not available for some reason. You don't need network access to commit changes, diff against previous versions or show history, etc, you only it to "push" any pending commits to a remote repo or to "pull" (update) if you're collaborating with someone else. If you don't want to host on your NAS, you could still clone a separate working copy from your main source code stash on your own machine in case you're worried about completely stuffing everything up and you want to start again.
Not sure what else to say about it, other than if you have any previous code-versioning experience it can be a little confusing at first - it has different meanings for terms other versioning systems use, like "commit", and it has strange-at-first terms like "fast forwarding". I've had fewer problems managing/merging branches than any other system, and its lack of network dependency comes in handy when working on the train when the WiFi's a bit dodgy.
Hope that helps, Simon