Setting up SVN

[suklee]

I have a desktop (OS X Leopard) at home with a laptop (XP) and want to set up SVN with OS X acting as the "server". How would I go about doing this? I work on OS X 90% of the time, but there will be occasions when I suddenly need to travel and having the most up-to-date files on my laptop would be great.

 

[Cogman]

I suggest you go look up subversion.tigris.org and read the documentation. Unfortuntally setting up a server of any kind is pretty specific to the environment it is in hence isn't a trivial matter.

 

[mundane]

You can access the svn daemon over SSH. Or if you're feeling more ambitious, put Apache on your server with webdav.

Your post suggests you might be looking more for data duplication than version control. If that's the case, you can always sync via an FTP server.

 

[suklee]

I've tried manually copying/syncing files but did not find it to be an intuitive process. After a while I lose track of which computer has the most "up to date" files and folders.

I was under the impression that if I have SVN set up correctly, when I need to travel I would "check out" entire folders on my laptop (from the desktop) and have the newest and most updated files with me on the road. Then, when I return to my desktop I can check in the files and continue work on my desktop.

Could SVN help me here?

 

[mundane]

It could help. You'd have a repository on your desktop (server). When you're working on any machine (including your desktop), you checkout a working copy and operate on that directory structure. Commit any changes, and whenever you update any working copy those changes would be included.

It stores *every* change you make, so you may revert to a previous state if you need. Depending on the kind of files you're using, the repository may grow quickly in size.

 

[Ken g6]

Alternatively, you could do an xcopy /D, from your laptop, of all the files back and forth.

 

[RaiderJ]

Have you tried something like Dropbox? 2GB is free, and it works great to sync files between systems and give you a nice online interface. I wish they'd release a "home" version.

 

[suklee]

I've heard of dropbox, but never used it. I am thinking of situations where I'm offline and developing on a localhost server on xampp, so it could be useful provided I always have the most updated files inside the online Dropbox. [just watched bits of the video... looks like could be just what I need!]

xcopy.. isn't that for DOS? Is there a Mac OS equivalent?

 

[Aikouka]

I can't remember which, but I'm pretty sure I could never get my SVN to work, but I got a CVS to work pretty easily (spent hours trying to get the SVN to work and the CVS only took minutes). I did this on a Windows machine using CygWin though, but I imagine it'd be a lot easier on OSX since it's built on UNIX. I did mine via SSH.

One thing I never got used to was the revision numbering on the repository. I'm very used to Serena products myself and I like the individual version numbering, but the CVS just used an incremented number for anything. Just seems like a messy approach.