Conversion to subversion
Thycotic Software has always used the software preferred by our clients and has made recommendations in some cases, mostly away from Visual SourceSafe and its exclusive checkout or generally connected nature. We had been using SourceGear's Vault for our own projects and even had it setup in our online hosted environment for access from our offices and client locations (asides from our own products, we also have open source and internal APIs that our developer consultants would often need to access). We had been hearing great things in the community about Subversion and were eager to try it out but not having an expert in the company meant we would have a learning curve. Enter John Morales - our new hire in November of 2005 - John joined our team biting his lip at having to use our existing source control tools but firmly believed he could turn the tide towards his favorite source control tool, Subversion.
After some unhappy source control experiences (including lost source code), we decided to undertake an evaluation - our objectives were:
- Try out Subversion with one project to see if it is an improvement over other source control tools
- Minimize the learning curve for developers
- Minimize developer downtime
- Maintain an online repository for access from various locations
- Minimize administration costs
We started out slowly by moving a single project (Secret Server) onto the new platform but decided to use a turn-key service provided by CVSDude (recommended by John based on his previous experiences with them) to meet our objectives. CVSDude offers a free account for a single user or their a low commitment base plan "Developer" which allows 4 accounts for just $30 for 3 months. This meant that we didn't have to maintain or configure the Subversion server and could let someone else deal with backups and uptime. Our Subversion server is now available online meaning that we can access it from our offices and from client locations. By upgrading to the "More Developer" plan, we were also able to get secure access (SSL) to our repository.
We have been very happy with our evaluation of Subversion and have subsequently made the decision to move all our product projects to Subversion. We are using the TortoiseSVN client - which uses Windows Explorer as your interface to source control (using icon overlays) and you simply manage your codebase from your filesystem. The separation of Visual Studio .NET from the source control client also seems to be a move in the right direction - VS.NET is more responsive and doesn't have random pauses any more (we would sometimes see 20-30 seconds pauses when working with source control integration). I have also been impressed with the patch capabilities and the labelling of the repository with a version on every checkin - this makes reviewing work much easier and helps to keep track as tasks are completed.
For John's perspective on our conversion, read this.
Jonathan Cogley is the CEO and founder of thycotic, a .NET consulting company and ISV in Washington DC. thycotic has just released Thycotic Secret Server which is a secure web-based solution to both "What is the router's password?" and "Who has the password for our domain name?". Secret Server is the leader in secret management and sharing within companies and teams.