Does Subversion sound like the answer to this?

[Brazen]

Ok, this is for GIS map files, but here is what we do: Right now we just use a Samba server and the map files are opened directly from the file share (software only allows one person to open files at a time). This is sloooooooow.

I'm thinking I could use subversion. Have the user checkout the map they are working on, have it download to their local machine, then when they are done, commit the changes back up to the server. I don't really need to keep versions of the files, just the latest version is all I need to keep.

Does this sound like a job for Subversion, or is there something that would be better suited to this, since a lot of the Subversion documentation talks about managing multiple versions of a directory?

 

[Thyme]

Obviously version control software is designed for multiple versions, but the check-in check-out functionality of SVN will work like you want it to. You should probable be able to make it so that it doesn't keep versions, but I'm not that experienced with it. I suspect there are other programs that provide this functionality natively, but I don't know any offhand. Software forum might be a better place to ask.

 

[Nothinman]

Be aware that subversion doesn't lock files on checkout so multiple people can checkout the same file at once and then try to commit conflicting changes later.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Thyme
Obviously version control software is designed for multiple versions, but the check-in check-out functionality of SVN will work like you want it to. You should probable be able to make it so that it doesn't keep versions, but I'm not that experienced with it. I suspect there are other programs that provide this functionality natively, but I don't know any offhand.

I'm reading the red-beans documentation and it is stressing that Subversion remembers _every_ version of a file, but yeah I'm hoping I can just disable that functionality so we don't waste space.

Software forum might be a better place to ask.

Well, all I ever see in the Software forum are game related threads. The few times I've asked anything moderately technical in there, I don't get a response. I figured this was closer to a network service question anyway, more along the lines of DNS, CIFS, or HTTP.

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Be aware that subversion doesn't lock files on checkout so multiple people can checkout the same file at once and then try to commit conflicting changes later.

hmmm, that doesn't seem very useful. Even in a development environment, I would think that would be a problem
...ok, after reading more of the documentation, I see how it resolves conflict management, which I'm sure works well for text files but will not work for GIS map files. Luckily, straight from the documentation: "Subversion also supports file locking, so if you have unmergeable files, or if you are simply forced into a locking policy by management, Subversion will still provide the features you need." So I think I'm good to go.

 

[hanoverphist]

one of our customers uses projectWise to serve their cad files. i personally hate all those share proggies, just give me some prints and we will do the rest, send you a disk when we are done with our phase.

 

[hanoverphist]

http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Products/ProjectWise/

it can be standalone or web based, and it does lock out if the files are checked out or in edit mode. it also works with pretty much all the files we have needed, word, excel, pwr point, autocad,... list goes on.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: hanoverphist
one of our customers uses projectWise to serve their cad files. i personally hate all those share proggies, just give me some prints and we will do the rest, send you a disk when we are done with our phase.

This is actually all internal, all in the same office. We distribute the maps to remote clients by ftp server, or they can come to our office and request a CD.

I'm liking Subversion, with TortoiseSVN on my desktop. It should be easy enough for the GIS people to use and it was super simple to set up (I'm pretty much done already!). I still just need to figure out how to stop it from keeping versions (or maybe just keep the last 1 or 2 versions). The maps take up enough space as it is, keeping multiple versions of them is not going to be feasible, nor is it necessary!

 

[Thyme]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Be aware that subversion doesn't lock files on checkout so multiple people can checkout the same file at once and then try to commit conflicting changes later.

SVN I believe has a mode where files have to be checked out. That's one of the major problems with CVS that SVN tried to improve upon (to handle binaries)