16

Searching with '[Delphi] "source control"' didn't return much, so here goes: For those of you Delphi programmers working on your own, what source control do you like? I know about TortoiseSVN (which can be used without a server), but I'd like to know if there are better options before choosing it.

Thank you.

Gulbahar
  • 5,343
  • 20
  • 70
  • 93
  • 3
    'single-user' shouldn't be one of your concerns, as sometime in the distant future there may be more than just one person who needs access. – nilamo Sep 03 '09 at 15:55

16 Answers16

22

SVN will be more than enough as you'll mostly use it for backing up and diff'ing versions.

You can use VisualSVN Server and TortoiseSVN with Delphi IDE Integration. All of these are freeware. If you wish to use any other freeware SCM with Delphi IDE integration you'll need to buy SourceConneXion or Athlant. Also, if you're using D2009 you'll need to convert strings to ansistrings in order to get TortoiseSVN addon for delphi to work.

curious slab
  • 1,130
  • 1
  • 15
  • 24
15

I use Mercurial, and have used Bazaar and Perforce (free for small teams). All are good, but nowadays I tend to prefer Mercurial. Mercurial comes with its own tortoise which, while not quite as polished as TortoiseSVN, is perfectly usable:

TortoiseHg Screenshot in Explorer
(source: sourceforge.net)

For users of RAD Studio XE or XE2, Uwe Schuster has published an IDE add-on called Version Insight Plus that adds Mercurial and Git support to the IDE's built in version control support.

Version Insight Plus Screenshot showing Mercurial and Git integration

For all the systems I have mentioned, no central server is required.

Glorfindel
  • 21,988
  • 13
  • 81
  • 109
Vinay Sajip
  • 95,872
  • 14
  • 179
  • 191
  • 1
    Another +1 for Mercurial. Very easy to use and has some nice features like being able to HTTP push your repository to a remote server, allowing you to easily remote backup your work. – DaveJohnston Sep 03 '09 at 10:24
  • Second this. Switched from SVN to HG for Delphi dev. with TortoiseHG. Some small nuances HG offers made a great difference in my productivity. I'd say go directly with HG. – utku_karatas Sep 03 '09 at 20:52
  • Maybe we were using an old version of Perforce at the time, but I was not a fan. – Andy Gaskell Sep 04 '09 at 02:43
11

I would recommend Git which is free & open source and:

  • Doesn't require you to even set a central server even if you want add more developers or machines.
  • Is Extremely Fast (imo)
  • Encourages the use of branches

I use it for almost every new project, even when it's just me on the project. It's an extremely fast distributed version control system and was written by Linus Torvalds and is now used in high profile projects like the Linux Kernel and Ruby on Rails.

Git isn't hard to use from the Command line but also has it's own "Tortoise" package (TortoiseGit - albeit not as polished as it's SVN cousin).

jamiei
  • 2,006
  • 3
  • 20
  • 28
6

SourceGear Vault is free for a single user. I like to use the external client because I work in different environments, but If you want Delphi IDE integration, you can use Source ConneXion (not free).

Bruce McGee
  • 15,076
  • 6
  • 55
  • 70
4

You might look at some of the responses here (Stack Overflow) if you do have Delphi in mind. As mentioned in the answers there, I use Team Coherence which integrates very nicely with Delphi's IDE, and is aware of Delphi file groups (.pas with .dfm etc). I think it's written in Delphi too.

Having said that, the other comments already made are true - you shouldn't really let your choice of language dictate your choice of VCS.

 

Even though you've said single user, I would look for a solution that allows you to easily host it on a server/other desktop machine, so you have separated your development machine from your source repository. I'm probably teaching granny to suck eggs but you ought to check that whatever you choose can be easily backed-up too (even to a USB key or external drive would be fine). :-)

Community
  • 1
  • 1
robsoft
  • 5,525
  • 4
  • 35
  • 47
4

I know you have asked for Source Control, but if you are always planning to be a 'single developer' you might like to consider an automatic backup solution like AJC Active Backup instead. Yes, you lose the ability to check in and out specific versions, but at the same time you avoid the need to check stuff in and out all the time when it is only you working on a project. And you can recover or diff any previous source files by date for as far back as you care to configure. It's very much a set-and-forget solution, until you need to recover something, when it is invaluable. And the archive itself can be backed up in the normal way.

frogb
  • 2,040
  • 15
  • 22
  • 4
    A good backup strategy is (very) important, but no substitute for source control. They solve different problems. – Bruce McGee Sep 03 '09 at 15:58
  • 1
    I completely agree. But AJC is not just a backup strategy and does provide at least some of the features that source control provides. I read the question as asking for other options... – frogb Sep 03 '09 at 18:47
2

The language you use doesn't really matter in the choice of the SCM you will use. It can matter if your favorite IDE supports or not this SCM.

TortoiseSVN is just a svn client, if you choose svn you can have several client.

I use Tortoise, and subclipse for committing in the same svn repository.

Argalatyr
  • 4,639
  • 3
  • 36
  • 62
Antoine Claval
  • 4,923
  • 7
  • 40
  • 68
  • You can have an SVN repository on a local filesystem and use it without a server - TortoiseSVN can create such a repository, subclipse can't. – Michael Borgwardt Sep 14 '09 at 09:31
2

I would suggest using SVN server on a separate machine (either VisualSVN as suggested before or CollabNET Subversion Server) and TortoiseSVN with JVCL integration expert (also as suggested before).

Besides getting all the good stuff from the version control, you'll also automatically have backup on a different computer, which is always a good thing.

gabr
  • 26,580
  • 9
  • 75
  • 141
2

I use TortoiseSVN, but store my repositories as files on my laptop (on a share that can be accessed by mutilple VMs), not managed by a server. This means that I have full access to the repository regardless of server access, but also allows me to easily backup the repositories to the company file server when connected.

Since I am the only programmer I have not needed a separate server so far. I have seen Nick Hodges (Delphi Development Manager) say very nice things about VisualSVN Server, and I aim to check this out, to see how easy it is to backup/restore the repository: if that can be automated, and done very quickly, then I will probably adopt that.

Longer term I am going to look at the various flavours of distributed VCS, as that may be better suited to multiple laptop-based developers; I'm not sure yet, as I've not reached that page of my to-do list ;-)

One of the things supposedly in the pipeline for Delphi is integrated support for VCS. I've no details on that, or on any implications for current users of the various traditional or distributed VCS.

IanH
  • 304
  • 1
  • 7
2

I know this will get down voted, but I feel it has to be said.

I've used Version Control software for many years at my job, and it is required when multiple people work together - to make absolutely sure that no two people overwrite one-another's work.

But for my personal development at home I don't use one. I find them overbearing and inconvenient for a simple one-person project. And I've tried several packages including Source Gear Vault and some others that other people have mentioned.

What I do instead is at every significant change to my program that I might want to go back to, I make a copy of the entire program directory. If I screw up in the next change, I can go back to the copied directory.

I also permanently keep copies of all my directories of every release of my program. If I ever need to do comparisons between my current version and previous releases, or between two different previous releases, I use Beyond Compare by Scooter Software - a simply great tool for diff-ing and copying changes between versions. If you use Source Control software, Beyond Compare will integrate into it nicely.

So I mention this simply because I have often heard everyone pushing Version Control Software, even for the individual developer. For some of us, it's overkill.

You may want to consider this simpler solution.

Community
  • 1
  • 1
lkessler
  • 19,819
  • 36
  • 132
  • 203
  • Even when I work on my own on a certain project, I find a vcs quite handy to transfer code between multiple working locations (home/work/laptop). But indeed, I've seen many people who manage everything manually just fine, so I guess they don't need any vcs. Anyway.. +1 for having your own opinion. – Wouter van Nifterick Sep 04 '09 at 03:27
  • Thanks for the tip. I prefer to use an SCM so I can keep track of version number. – Gulbahar Sep 05 '09 at 22:00
  • 2
    So basically, you're using an error-prone, slow, labor-intensive manual process that lacks many of the features of a VCS. I used to do that too until I recently got of my lazy ass and created a local SVN repository. It's far less inconvenient and overbearing than your (and my previous) solution. – Michael Borgwardt Sep 14 '09 at 09:36
  • @Michael: When a project is young, I tend to rearrange source files and rename them often as I get a better understanding of the optimal structure. What's slow and error-prone is having to remember to go through Tortoise's (quite inconvenient) hierarchical right-click menu instead of, say, pressing F2 in your preferred file manager, or being able to rename files en masse using a pattern. Forget just once, and the repository loses consistency. That's not to say Tortoise/svn is bad, but it certainly wins in the "slow and error-prone" category over, dunno, Total Commander. – Marek Jedliński Dec 10 '11 at 20:25
  • @moodforaday: failing to use an explicit svn move does not lose consistency, it just loses the revision history of the file. But even then you still have a concise, commented history of what changed in the repository and where moved files are at least connected by appearing in the same revision. That's still a lot better than a series of filesystem snapshots. – Michael Borgwardt Dec 11 '11 at 06:58
1

I use Bazaar with Delphi and it works well, especially for solo developer workflows. It has it's own TortoiseBzr but it isn't as good as some of its cousins so I recommnend the excellent Bazaar Explorer instead. One of the great things about Bazaar is it's flexibility and the ease with which you can change workflow or include another developer in a project that started off solo.

A lot of articles about Bazaar will tell you it is a lot slower than Git or Mercurial. They are out of date, now it takes a similar time to acomplish operations as they do and is faster on some operations.

Iron
  • 81
  • 1
1

My team use StarTeam and I have never used something else like SVN so it is hard for me to do a good compare. Starteam has both positive and negative sides.

Pros:

  • You can register Change requests and connect them to checkins. This make changes more trackable.
  • I feel more comfortable with a real GUI compared to commandline or some Shell extension.

Cons:

  • Expensive, as most products from Borland...
  • Latest version use Java. It is almost like the previous Win32 version and they have added more features, but I still feel that it is some slower and more memory hungry than before.
  • GUI could be a bit more intuitive.
Roland Bengtsson
  • 5,058
  • 9
  • 58
  • 99
  • I worked with Starteam on small team and it's highly customizable GUI client is amazing - the filter and query features are astonishing once you grasp it. – Fabricio Araujo Sep 03 '09 at 19:58
1

I'm not big on version control, but use SVN/Tortoise and am quite happy with it. The main benefits that I see for a single developer is being able check out older versions of the application, and use multiple computers for development (desktop / laptop) - other than the obvious backup benefit. I tend to not need it for diffing files, as I find the version control tools within the Delphi IDE fairly good for this - provided the "bug" was introduced recently.

I think most Delphi developers use SVN/Tortoise (making it a fairly safe choice) - but there are trendyer options such as Mercurial and Git.

Alister
  • 6,527
  • 4
  • 46
  • 70
  • 1
    On top of the reasons you mentioned, source control lets me try "what if" scenarios and experimental code fearlessly with more granularity than taking a snapshot of the VM and it lets me walk through the history to find out where a bug was introduced. – Bruce McGee Sep 06 '09 at 13:24
1

As a single developer, I have used Perforce for a number of years. It has been great. Aside from a CLI, you can use the P4V client. There's also an explorer plugin available, as well as Delphi IDE integration. I actually just found this free integration on Torry yesterday:

p4delphi

I've installed it in Delphi 2010, and it works pretty good.

Vic Adam
  • 146
  • 2
1

I am using subversion, bug tracking and simple to use project planning for my latest delphi project from an web service provider. http://www.unfuddle.com has a free account for projects less than 200mb with 1-2 developers and the user interface is easy to use.

sjngm
  • 12,423
  • 14
  • 84
  • 114
user172473
  • 11
  • 1
1

Perforce is free for two user, it would require you to install perforce server, but the server footprint is very, very small. you can use P4V (Perforce visual client) which is far more convenient than tortoise, it also provide Windows explorer extension to be have just as tortoise (but you could skip this installation). Delphi integration could be done using P4Delphi.

Jaimy Azle
  • 138
  • 2
  • 4