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Up until now, even though I do a lot of small home projects, I have never used any source control for my own projects. I am now almost at the point of deploying my first personal public website and figured that this would be a good time to set something up. One of the main things I am looking for is version control (labelling etc). Integration with Visual Studio (2010) is nice but not essential.

I realise that for free, I am not going to get anything as good as TFS or similar, but what am looking for suggestions for a free source control.

Any ideas?

John Saunders
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Ben
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11 Answers11

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I think git is a good choice, see below link Using Git with Visual Studio

Community
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emailhy
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Assuming a Windows environment, I can't recommend VisualSVN Server enough. The server is free, but the GUI does cost a few bucks. Not a lot. Considering how well the GUI interfaces with Visual Studio, it's well work the price.

Metro Smurf
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You can easily use Mercurial for Windows and get a plugin for Visual Studio.

Joel Spolsky wrote a guide to using Mercurial.

Vadim Kotov
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wkl
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You could look at Mercurial. Basically you'd want to run TortoiseHg + VisualHG add-in for VS integration.

Vadim Kotov
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Craig
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I would suggest VisualSVN for the server (I use it for all my projects) and RocketSVN for the Visual Studio client.

VisualSVN Server is a great (and easy) way to control your Subversion server, while RocketSVN integrates with Visual Studio 2010 in a seamless way.

Both, of course, are free.

Brad Butner
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  • Their "limited time" message has been up for over half a year. It's possible they'll eventually charge for it, but it's still the best SVN VS add-in I've found so far. – Brad Butner Jan 05 '11 at 17:27
  • It was recently announced that it's permanently free. Also check out AnkhSVN as they're nearly identical, see: http://bit.ly/dM3wBo – Sander Rijken Jan 29 '11 at 11:17
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Why don't you give a try to Plastic SCM?? It is free for teams up to 15 users and it is actually stronger than TFS for version control:

  • Much stronger branching and merging
  • Distributed (like Git and mercurial)
  • Graphical (have you seen the branch explorer??)
pablo
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The two most popular options you will come across for free version control are Subversion and Git.

Subversion is good if you will have a central repository that you always commit changes to and Git is good if you need your codebase to be de-centralized.

Jeff LaFay
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If there's just you then Perforce is an option.

It's free for 2 users and integrates well with Visual Studio.

The big plus point for me is the changelist management features so you can work on two or more edits at the same time if necessary without getting your files mixed up.

The big drawback is that you are limited to 2 users so if you get more people on board you'll have to switch.

ChrisF
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I use AnkhSVN - a Subversion Support for Visual Studio (a plugin). But, it is not enough. I need also SVN Client: I use SmartSVN Foundation ..It is the most professional client ..from what I found). Both are 100% FREE! There is also SmartSVN Professional - a full featured version that costs, but the free version is featured enough for me.

Why the VS plugin is not enough? Because you cannot do some things from within Visual Studio. For example: moving a file from one folder to another. Another example: You want to add files (let say some '.h' files) to SVN repository that are not added to (or part of) the Visual Studio project. etc.

Vadim Kotov
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Amit G.
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Git is a good choice; so is Subversion. The CollabNet version runs very nicely on my home machine as a Windows service.

duffymo
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Since Subversion is mentioned I can recommend the SmartSVN client, great SVN client, free version available.

Vadim Kotov
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ROAR
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    Another free Subversion client directly integrated in Visual Studio is AnkhSVN. We've been using it for years and it works perfectly. – Peter Macej Dec 01 '10 at 21:15