On Feb 19, 2006, at 12:10 AM, Vivek K. wrote:
I am wondering how far one can go without using SwitchTower.
I imagine you can go completely crazy.
I simply copy the files on to the server (naive I
know ).SwitchTower seems to need a svn repository.I think most
people have a local copy of the source which they want to deploy on
a host.
I dont see any reason why SwitchTower mandates a svn
repository.Cant it just copy files from the local repository to the
host?
SwitchTower, out of the box, mandates a repository, and not just a
Subversion repository but also supports CVS, Bazaar, Bazaar NG, and
Perforce.
It does this because it’s “The Right Way to Do It”
When I first encountered version control, ala CVS in 1999 or so, I
thought it was a big drag and extra overhead that would serve no
purpose. I
resisted its implementation for a month or so until the person who
was advocating its use finally went ahead and sucked out code in and
gave
a demonstration of it’s use.
In five minutes’ time, I was absolutely smitten, and wished I had
been using it since 1978. Where had CVS been my whole life? I now had
the
ability to know what I had done and where I was at, EVEN WHEN IT WAS
JUST ME WRITING CODE. All of the other benefits of version control
took a bit longer to sink it, but the ability to isolate changes
(branch), remember release points (tag), work fluidly with co-workers
without
ever losing code, hack as aggressively as I wanted to without fear of
losing what worked previously, and a complete freedom from ever worrying
about making copies with names like file.old, file.date, file,bak,
etc. is just something I’ll never work without again.
Take a few minutes to get your code into Subversion and you’ll be
happy you did.
Programmers should NOT work without version control.
When Rails was pre 1.0, there was a lot of stress after each release
with people not being sure how to gracefully upgrade their source trees
to the new version. Those of us under version control had no such
stress:
- Commit all changes
- Run upgrade
- Run diff to see what changed
- Pick and choose the changes we wanted
The benefits just go on and on…
–
– Tom M.