Advantages / Disadvantages of Server Subversion for Solo Developer

Question

Is TortoiseSVN good for this?

What about the best practices?

Any particular relationship to complex issues using this method?

Answer 1

For one developer, this is normal.
But I strongly do not recommend using it with more than one developer.

The SVN book says:

Do not be tempted by the simple idea of ​​accessing all users to the repository directly through the file: // URL. Even if the repository is easily accessible to everyone through a network share, it is a bad idea. It removes any levels of protection between users and the repository: users may accidentally (or intentionally) damage the repository database, it becomes difficult to take the offline repository for checking or updating, and this can lead to a mess of file permissions problems (see section “Support for multiple Methods for accessing the repository ".) Please note that this is also one of the reasons why we warn about access to repositories via svn + ssh: // URLs - from a security point of view, this is actually the same as a lock nye users accessing via file: //, and can entail all the same problems if the administrator does not exhibit caution.

(From: http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.4/svn.serverconfig.choosing.html )

Installing svnserve is not that difficult, and it’s actually worth putting an hour or two into the setup.

Answer 2

Obvious drawback: even if you use RAID, so you have redundancy on the disks, if your computer is lost or stolen, you get into it. If you have a source hosted somewhere on the server, then if the server or your client machine is stolen, you will have another copy. (Admittedly, if the server is stolen, you will lose history and branches, but this is better than nothing.)

Answer 3

I'm doing it. I am using the SVN shared folder. Inside this folder is each of my subversion repositories for various projects.

There were no problems. Now I place this on a RAID 5 array for redundancy.

I must indicate that they have been doing this for more than 3 years.

I also installed this in the corporate environment over the past 2 years, when there were more than 200 checks in the repository and the size was more than 200 MB.

Answer 4

I used to run the Linux server only to host the SVN server (I do almost all my development on Windows), but I was tired of howling it under my table and switching to a single-user SVN hosted on Windows. I had no problems (touch the tree), but I will take care of backing up all my SVN repositories often, so at best I could lose my work for several days. There is no need for complicated backup procedures, just buy yourself several USB flash drives and just copy them the SVN archive directories.

Answer 5

My suggestion is that you have to be very careful with permissions. I found some random problems in the solo developer configuration, so if something first introduces weird access control and lock status in the repository. If you have several unrelated projects, then I create a directory for each project, and in this directory I put two subdirectors: SVN, which contains the repo for the project, and "checkout", which contains the actual check. I use this approach because I have an automatic backup of my home directory, so I get a backup of both the project and its repository. Alternatively, you can put the repo in a different location (which needs to be backed up).