Question

I’ve reached a point in my independent development work where I would like to start using Subversion techniques.

Up to now, I’ve been simply making backups by exporting my current database, and zipping them together with my PHP project files.

I’ve read some articles online and watched a video with Linus Torvalds – the general verdict seems to be that Git is in and old CVS techniques are out.

I’m not currently operating under Linux, I do all PHP work out of Windows -> Eclipse. Due to the fact that Eclipse runs on JVM, jumping into Linux -> Eclipse will be more or less transparent – file system aside.

What I would like to accomplish is being able to keep a constant revision history – But I want this to be almost entirely transparent. Also, I work in an MVC framework, and I would like to be able to release my views to Designers, and have them work from within the revision control system too.

Will Egit accomplish what I need? Or is it too much overhead for a one-man workforce?
What do you recommend I use so that I can keep a revision history?

I also require the service to be free!

Answer 1

Try these searches

https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=free+svn+hosting

https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=free+mercurial+hosting

As for choosing which one – I tend to agree with the google review here:

• Learning Curve. Git has a steeper learning curve than Mercurial
  due to a number of factors. Git has
  more commands and options, the volume
  of which can be intimidating to new
  users. Mercurial’s documentation tends
  to be more complete and easier for
  novices to read. Mercurial’s
  terminology and commands are also a
  closer to Subversion and CVS, making
  it familiar to people migrating from
  those systems.

• Windows Support. Git has a strong Linux heritage, and the
  official way to run it under Windows
  is to use cygwin, which is far from
  ideal from the perspective of a
  Windows user. A MinGw based port of
  Git is gaining popularity, but Windows
  still remains a “second class citizen”
  in the world of Git. Based on limited
  testing, the MinGW port appeared to be
  completely functional, but a little
  sluggish. Operations that normally
  felt instantaneous on Linux or Mac OS
  X took several tenths of a second on
  Windows. Mercurial is Python based,
  and the official distribution runs
  cleanly under Windows (as well as
  Linux, Mac OS X, etc).

But his is the hands-down clincher:

Maintenance. Git requires periodic
maintenance of repositories (i.e.
git-gc), Mercurial does not require
such maintenance. Note, however, that
Mercurial is also a lot less
sophisticated with respect to managing
the clients disk space (see Client
Storage Management above).

I don’t want to have to do “maintenance” on the git repos. That’s just unacceptable.

Summary

In terms of implementation effort,
Mercurial has a clear advantage due to
its efficient HTTP transport protocol.

In terms of features, Git is more
powerful, but this tends to be offset
by it being more complicated to use.

I have not moved all my stuff to mercurial – SVN is just fine for most projects – especially single-person projects.