Version Control for non-programmers

Question

Can someone recommend a version control engine + GUI that will be good for non-technical users? I'm perfectly fine with using Subversion with my team of developers, but I want to find something that will help the rest of our company. We are a design firm that deal with these type of files: Photoshop, Vectorworks, Microsoft Office, PDFs, etc. I find GUIs such as SVNx and even Versions(which is pretty nice) too difficult and techy for our designers to use. It's hard for them to understand the idea of working directories and its relationship to a repository.

We are a small company and don't have a huge budget so we would like to stay opensource if possible.

Answer 1

Bazaar has a pretty straightforward interface for the basic version-control tasks.

At some level, you're going to have to explain the basic concepts even to non-technical folk for them to make any use of it (there's no real way to "hide" the concept of committing your changes, for instance), but at the very least Bazaar's UI makes it pretty simple to do so, and keeps the option complexity down.

Answer 2

If your non-techies are on a Mac, I would recommend SVN with Cornerstone from Zennaware. It's not open-source, but not expensive either. Our designers love it and it's got a great GUI.

Answer 3

Doesn't SharePoint come with Windows Server? It can handle file versions.

Answer 4

I can say that Subversion and Perforce are both problematic to non-technical users. We have been using Perforce as a document repository with some success. Though we have had more mistakes and problems than I care to talk about. We had slightly more success with Subversion and TortoiseSVN but even it was too difficult to most non-programmers to wrap their heads around. Though if you are lucky enough to have Mac OSX in the office, I would give rich's suggestion a try.

I would recommend looking for a CMS that supports history instead of a source repository. You should be able to find something out there that will do the job without too much work on your part.

Answer 5

If you use TortiousCVS|SVN, its not too bad. Its a GUI/file based approach so its fairly straight forward. I've had non-technical people use it and like it.

Answer 6

I'd suggest SharePoint or Confluence. They both have a WebDAV interface which allows you to directly open and close files in the repository from Office and other current applications. SharePoint works better with Microsoft Office, as there are Microsoft specific WebDAV extensions in Office. Additionally, Confluence only offers WebDAV through a plugin.

Both of them are commercial products, though Confluence does have a shared source license, allowing you to make local modifications.

Answer 7

Drop Box.

Answer 8

I recommend to check NeverOverwrite.

It keeps all versions of your files automatically. Sounds like an an ideal solution for non-developer.

Answer 9

How about a Wiki with some minimal version control built in ... like mediawiki

Answer 10

Why do you use source repository control for binary files like Photoshop, Vectorworks, Microsoft Office, PDFs, etc? I think Content Management System works better for you. Try using Alfresco, it's opensource and powerful.