On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 8:20 PM, Michael Watterson <mike@radioway.org> wrote=
:
>
> Source Control systems IMO are purely to manage Collaborative
> development. They should never really be used for archiving versions and
> especially not for backup.


This isn't true.

Look at this scenario:

- I hacked away on a 1000 lines of code, it didn't work.
- after struggling, with lot of thoughts and help from online
communities, phew I got my basic idea to work.
- I was very happy, this made me over zealous and spent the next 2
weeks at hacking in new features, ideas and concepts.
- eventually, as expected everything broke down, I couldn't even trace
back to my original state.
- with lot of frustration, I searched for those bits and pieces what I
had originally.

* Phew, I got back to my old state. But what happened to my
inspirations, ideas and thoughts ?


Now, look at this scenario:

- I hacked away some crap. using a SCM I committed it to the repository
- After some efforts, I got things working. I committed it with a Tag
line, "this version works"
- I became over zealous, hacked away on tons of code, what was once
working broke completely.
- I looked at my commit logs, I checked out the version that was
working. Phew, that hardly took a minute.

Now, I can keep trying to identify the problems in the code that
checked in after a last working commit.

Now, I have breathing space.


Now, lets look at another scenario:

- I hacked away on tons of code after having working situations, each
time making a separate archive for backup/storage.

- I got into some other new work. and return back after almost 6
months/ or a year and I have lost track of what I did.

Now, in the situation that I have been using a SCM/VCS, I can just
look up at my commit logs (of course I had to commit each of my
changes with a meaningful entry); Hey, all that old memories flash
down my mind like a movie.

Phew, saved again ...


You can maintain a 1:1 relation between builds and files only when you
are dealing with small projects or fewer projects. When your hands are
there in so many places, you really need to keep track of what you are
doing.


> if you can have only one person per module, arguably you hardly need
> them. If you are single person working on something why would you use one=
?
>
> They are all also rather horrid to use.


have you tried mercurial ?
http://mercurial.selenic.com/

generally SCM's are horrid to use, why because they are tedious to
setup and too many commands to be remembered.

mercurial is simple to use, require no servers (unless you want to
host them for public reasons)

I have a few repositories, VCS really made my life easier ..
http://jusst.de/hg/


Manu
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