If only I were

If you are working in software development, source control needs to be part of what you do. It should be one of the first tools/processes that you implement.  If you are not version controlling your source code then I’m betting you don’t value your code as much as you should. If I’m wrong here then it is probably because you don’t even know what you are missing by not implementing source control.

Subversion has become a very well respected version control tool and with good support across all of the major development platforms.  There are many other excellent version control tools out there, but I’m focusing my attention on Subversion for three reasons: it is free, it has such a rich ecosystem around it and it is very stable.

What I want to do is give you some starting points in implementing source control if you are already feeling the pain of not having your source code under version control.

Subversion, TortoiseSVN and VisualSVN recently all got rev’d to version 1.5. Read James Kovacs writeup for more information about the 1.5 release.

Windows based tools to get you started

Subversion – this what everything else builds off of, it is free for you

TortoiseSVN – windows explorer shell integration, this is free for you

VisualSVN – Visual Studio 2005/2008 integration, well worth the $49

VisualSVN Server – helps you install the repository, setup user rights and helps publish over http, this is free for you

Source Control 101

Read Eric Sink’s Source Control HOWTO series of articles. Btw, he builds a great version control system called SourceGear Vault.

Subversion in 30 Seconds

Subversion setup links

Secured Subversion – some of Ayende’s thoughts

Subversion FAQ – lots of specific questions are answered here

Rick Strahl’s Subversion Setup – Subversion, TortoiseSVN and Visual Studio

Books

Subversion Book – pdf and html formats

Pragmatic Version Control using Subversion – this is a great book, I own it