Setting up SVN - Web based services VS your own SVN server

Question

Hi,

I intend to implement subversioning for projects developed on with a handful of people in the same location. I am reviewing the options on whether to use a web based SVN storage or install SVN on a local machine and use it as the main repository.

My command line knowledge is OK and I haven't done much server management however I am all up for learning.

At the moment to me using a web based service (eg. assembla.com) is the clearer choice as the only disadvantage is having to pay (a reasonable) fee for the service. Using a web service all server maintained and support is taken care of and requires little to no configuration by myself.

While setting up a server yourself would be cheaper how difficult would it be to set up and maintain a repository.

I would just like some ideas on the distinct advantages / disadvantages of each choice.

Thanks for your time.

Answer 1

If your server is windows based, Visual SVN Server makes setting up a repository and configuring it trivial. It's completely GUI based and free (the non enterprise version anyway).

That being said, you have to balance that with the trade off that if you host yourself you have to worry about planning for failures, disasters, etc. The benefit of paying a host is they take care of all that for you, so it will just depend on your needs.

Answer 2

Cheaper ? To me counting only the electricity would cost you more than 10$/month, and for that price you can have pretty good solution like ProjectLocker.

But most of all, to focus on your developpement, you have not to worry about your dev tools. Not have to worry if a disk crashes, if server crash, shut down, etc. Having even 99% of availability is hard.

IMO I prefer pay something as ridiculous s 10$/month and be peacefull and confident about availability and integrity of my work.

And I don't like doing admin stuff ^^

Answer 3

The easier way is to use a web based server. But you have to know if it's reliable.

Since it's a team in the same location, you have to understand that choosing a web based setup makes you dependant of internet access and your third-party solution. If one of them goes down (since you're using Subversion), you wouldn't be able to commit all your team changes until all errors are resolved.

If you are really into web based service, try to choose a dvcs that is more advanced and permits to each member of your team to have a full copy of the repository in their machines (like git or mercurial), so if you net/service provider goes down you can still work.

An interesting web based solution using git would be github.

Setting up a Subversion in house isn't hard. You just need a small machine (we use a Pentium IV here) with a Linux distribution. I installed SVN using Ubuntu's packages. We all use windows machines to communicate with the server using TortoiseSVN, a graphical client.

Answer 4

XP-Dev.com have a FREE SVN hosting solution which does NOT have to be open source, I use them and they are very good. Follow them on twitter for any upgrade announcements etc.

That said, I do run Visual SVN locally as well. Different horses for different courses I suppose. Having it locally has allowed me to learn SVN admin a LOT quicker :)

Kindness,

Dan

Answer 5

For personal hobby projects at home I set up my own SVN repository. I just use the file: protocol and access it through my home network. This was very easy to set up and it's been running very smoothly for several months. To back up, every now and then I copy the repository (and all my other files that need backing up) to the hard drive of a spare computer.

I'm not sure what the advantages are of accessing your repository with http: rather than file:. Well, there's the obvious advantage that you can access it over the Internet, but I mean I'm not sure if there's any advantage besides that. For my home use, where I have no need to access my home repository from outside my house -- I imagine my boss would frown on me working on hobby projects at the office -- this isn't an issue.

Answer 6

I use a locally hosted slicksvn on Windows, it's free and a self contained server - no need for Apache or IIS. I then sync this once/day to an S3 backup, along with the rest of the important stuff. Best of both worlds, I cna work when the net is down and still have online backup.