[TxMt] Re: Revision control

[Nigel Metheringham]

On 4 Oct 2011, at 12:50, Justin Catterall wrote:

> I've never done revision control before, and I don't know where to start. I need something I can use on OS X, and works well with TM. If I Google for "OS X revesion control" I get many suggestions including Mercurial, CVS, GIT, Subversion, Bazaar.

Unless you need it for legacy stuff - which looks unlikely - then forget CVS.

Subversion is probably conceptually slightly simpler, but is centralised (so you need to have network access to the main/central repository before you can check changes in and do several other operations), and it (confusingly to some) maps branches (different lines of development) and tags (marked version snapshots) as effectively directory copies in its filesystem - this may be helpful for some, but confusing to others....

Git & Mercurial appear to be roughly on a par featurewise - I understand Mercurial's command naming may be a little more straightforward.  My knowledge of Bazaar is very limited.  An actual choice of which one to use is probably down to who else you are working with, and whether they have experience in one over another.

Textmate supports all of these.  Personally I tend not to use Textmate's interfaces to the version control systems, but thats just how I work - I do however have git integration switched on and like having indications of whether or not the set of files I am working on are clean (ie checked into the version control system) or dirty.

I use git - I happen to use a version built using homebrew - http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/ - which is also built on top of git (a little recursive maybe).  An alternative place to get git binaries from is http://code.google.com/p/git-osx-installer/

I typically use Tower as a GUI on it  - not necessary, but I like it - it is however a little expensive.  http://www.git-tower.com/
An alternative GUI - most useful if you are looking back through lines of development - is GitX - http://gitx.laullon.com/ - this one is free


> I really have no idea where to start. I'd welcome some suggestions, or links to documentation I should perhaps read.

Best Git documentation I think is Pro Git - a book, but also available online. Its a reasonable introduction to general version control, but obviously somewhat biased towards git. http://progit.org/book/


	Nigel.


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[ Nigel Metheringham ------------------------------ nigel at dotdot.it ]
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