Micro Visions writes new source code for web and enterprise applications every day. As you can imagine, changes to these files, be it new features or bug fixes, can reach into the thousands every week. But what happens if new code for a proposed new feature is written and breaks the existing code in place? That’s where version control comes in.
Micro Visions uses version control software to keep source code for a project organized. Basically, this means that working code is “checked out” of a repository, worked on, then “checked back in” after changes are made. If tomorrow we realize that part of the project is now unusable because of a bug introduced yesterday, we can ask the repository to check us out a working copy of the entire project, as it stood yesterday, before the changes. This is only one of many scenarios where version control is invaluable.
We currently use TortoiseSVN, an open-source Windows client of the popular Subversion software. We like its platform-independence and its flexibility.
When first starting out with this product, however, and after pouring through the documentation, I couldn’t really quite get the hang of it until I started using it. I have thrown together a quick tutorial on using TortoiseSVN with a Visual Studio project on my blog.
Version control is usually associated with programming projects, but you can use it for just about anything. If you would like to know more, feel free to send me an email.
Tags: code, version control, visual studio