Question

I’m making a project in flash together with 4 more people, but we’ve faced the problem of having to recheck two files to see what’s the newest version of them (because sometimes a member of the team has to have access to all of the files), also, we’re not together every time…

This is our first project and I have not much of an idea of what to do. I suppose we need a server to ensure access to the same files, as well as a check-in/check-out system.

Also, I’ve seen some “project collaboration tools” like manymoon, but it just creates assignments without the file hosting.

We don’t have any money, but I have a free web host, in case it is needed (although I prefer a free website).

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Subversion (SVN) is an open-source revision control system that seems to fit the bill for what you need. There are some free online options that offer online subversion hosting. The two that I have heard of / used are SourceForge.net and Assembla.com. SourceForge is only for open source projects so your code and assets will be visible to the outside world. Assembla has both open and closed source options. The closed source option will limit you to 1Gb of storage for the free version which is generally enough for flash projects (but that depends on the project).

In the teams I’ve worked with, we didn’t use any exclusive file locking (where checking out a file restricts the access to that file for other users) and instead opted to merge the files back together when there are conflicts.

TortoiseSVN is a great free open-source client for Subversion that generally merges files by itself seamlessly when you submit your modifications. In a 5 person team the need for manually merging files should be very low.

There are of course many other options but these are the ones I have used to great success with small teams.