macOS source code versioning tips needed

[thevibesman]

I'd like to be keeping archives of my source code at various points along my development process so I can compare changes for performance and have the ability to roll back to previous versions if updates cause a problem. I'm not sure of the best way to do this working with XCode. Is there a feature built into XCode to do this, or do I need to manually back up the files/whole project myself?

Sorry if there is an obvious solution to this, but I can't seem to find anything in the XCode docs about this.

Thanks!

 

[lee1210]

I cannot speak to the Xcode integration of any of these tools, but this is exactly what tools like CVS, SVN, and git are for. You should be able to set any of these up on your OS X machine, and I'm confident Xcode will integrate with at least one of them.

-Lee

 

[Aranince]

As the previous post said, SVN, CVS, and git all do this. I would recommend git, because it is simple and works very well.

 

[plinden]

First link on "subversion and xcode" google search: http://developer.apple.com/tools/subversionxcode.html

 

[Sander]

If you have installed the developer tools from your Mac OS X DVD, Subversion will already be installed.

The integration with Xcode is actually pretty good.

If you are new to source control in general, I suggest you read the Subversion book, which is available for free online. If you only use it for your own one-man projects, it's sufficient to browse through the first few chapters. I would suggest setting up a Subversion "repository" (which holds the archive) on a separate computer. Installing the Subversion server is also quite easy, especially if you have an old Linux system lying around which already has Apache installed. As an alternative, Subversion comes with its own light-weight Subversion-specific server.

 

[lazydog]

You could use Xcode's inbuilt support for SVN and CVS but I think there is a better option. I've switched over to using VersionApp and BeanStalkApp and I am very very happy.


VersionApp is the best Subversion client I've used. It's not free but it is very cheap, very easy to use and super slick. I think it comes with a 30 day free trial so I would recommend giving it a whirl. You can use VersionApp with any SVN server including I guess a local repository on your Mac.

BeanstalkApp is an SVN hosting company. You can sign up for a free 20MByte account. 20MBytes might not sound like much but it's enough for archiving the source code to a few projects. There are several benefits to using a hosting company, but for me the main one is that the repository (where all the change history is stored) is managed and backed up offsite. Also having the repository out on the internet makes developing on multiple Macs a doddle.

b e n

 

[eviltobz]

cheers for the good tips people. I've just finished working my way through the hillegass book and i'm now starting work on a few of my own ideas and so i was also wondering about setting up some source control to use.

 

[thevibesman]

Thanks for all the tips everyone.

Turns out subversion (well, CVS too) is already installed on my webserver, so I guess I'll be learning that this weekend when I have some time.