Question

I am new to Version Control. Just setup an SVN Server on my Ubuntu. It works but I am wondering how do I test those files (Web Pages)? I suppose I want to commit changes and see how it looks on the server. When I look at the repo folder, its all the SVN files. How might I test those uploaded files then?

I could test them locally but I what I want is a more accurate test on server. What might be a good way of automatically coping these commits to the web root for example? Currently using SVN but perhaps it similar with GIT?

Answer 1

Subversion doesn’t address the problem you’re having, which is related to building and/or deploying your code. How you address this depends on your web development stack and the size of your project, but an acceptable workflow looks like:

1. Write your code using whatever editor tools you’re comfortable with.
2. Commit the changes to Subversion.
3. Run your deployment tool, pulling from your repository and deploying to your local machine.
4. Preview your changes. If you need to make more changes, start again at step 1.
5. Run your deployment tool, pulling from your repository and deploying to your production server.

Deployment may be a project all on its own, depending on how many steps are involved.