version control and linux

[shtylman]

This year we used linux to do our robot coding and also kept everything on a subversion repository. I am wondering if there are any other coders/teams out there that would like to make use of such a resource because we can show you how and also provide teams with space on our already set up repository system. This will allow you to have backups of your code as well as view it online. (trust me, its worth having a backup)

P.S. anyone needing linux help/guidance can also contact us as we have makefiles and general knowhow on the process.

~Roman
shtylman@gmail.com

[Timothy D. Ginn]

This year we used linux to do our robot coding and also kept everything on a subversion repository. I am wondering if there are any other coders/teams out there that would like to make use of such a resource because we can show you how and also provide teams with space on our already set up repository system. This will allow you to have backups of your code as well as view it online. (trust me, its worth having a backup)

The short answer is yes, there are teams. However, there are probably more who would be interested in getting their own repository running locally on say a laptop so that at a competition they can revert to an older version there if necessary. It's probably worth noting that Subversion is really useful for web development (we use it at openFIRST (http://www.openfirst.org/) but are still phasing some areas over from CVS).

I think teams would also find Unison (http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/) to be useful to maintain information across multiple machines (and syncronise changes between them). One case where this may be useful is if a team has more than one laptop and another is if people want to carry programs around on a USB key or something and update them back and forth between possibly more than one machine. Unison can be used in conjunction with Subversion (and there's some information about that in their FAQ). Oh, and it's of course usable on both Linux and Windows (just like Subversion is available across multiple platforms).

Might I suggest writing up a version control HOWTO for teams on FIRSTwiki (http://www.firstwiki.org/) or in the white papers section here? (There already seems to be one on compiling/using Linux for robot coding). If you'd like, I can help with the Unison/Web Development bit. Were you by any chance using Eclipse on Linux for robot coding? (It's a handy tool for web development too).

[deficite]

I had already planned on using Linux after my first year of coding (2004) if I were to ever code again. I might next year. If I do, we'd most definitely be going SVN on either Arch Linux or Xubuntu.