tags:

views:

312

answers:

11

What tools/plugins do you use for checking in/out code?

how to communicate changes made to the code, how to make request for new functionality?

How has your team solved this?

+1  A: 

You should use one of the many available source control repositories. Trust me, you won't know what you did without it :)

Andrew Hare
+3  A: 

You can pretty much use any tools for small development teams you wish. There are lots of options.

Personally, my team uses SVN for code, and Trac for tracking - mostly because it's very cost effective for a small team. However, there's nothing C#/.NET specific about that setup.

If your team has MSDN subscriptions, you might want to consider Team Foundation Server. It has many features for integration with Visual Studio that are (arguably) superior to some of the alternatives.

Reed Copsey
TFS needs a fairly hefty server and is quite heavyweight - having set up and used both I'd strongly recommend SVN + Tortoise + Ankh for smaller teams. Actually I'd recommend it for bigger teams, too, but there ya go!
Jeremy McGee
The 2010 release makes this much simpler, btw - You can do "personal" TFS installs, on a local machine, with very little setup pain. But, as I said, my team is using SVN + Tortoise + Trac, now, because I found it was more cost effective to host.
Reed Copsey
+6  A: 

See this previously asked question:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1447653/multiple-programmers-in-software-development-how-do-we-work-on-the-same-code-and/1447658#1447658

There are a lot of good answers to this question, and they apply to small and large teams.

For source control, we use Svn with the Tortoise SVN client. We've used other source control systems in the past, and have found this one to be the best for our needs.

David Stratton
A: 

There are plugins for Visual Studio for working on a team, but personally I've never used them.

I've done team projects with both Subversion and Mercurial... just make sure to check in the solution and project files, and all related code.

Everyone will also need to be running the same version of Visual Studio.

For requesting new functionality, you might want to consider an external solution like Trac or Bitbucket or some other free system that includes issue tracking.

Sapph
+4  A: 

I would recommend you use SVN for source code management, if you are using visual studio you can get numerous plugins for IDE integration.

http://subversion.tigris.org/
http://www.visualsvn.com/ = SVN Server & VS Integration

Try to set up Continuous Integration for this you can use Cruise Control .Net or Hudson. Cruise control can be set up to do a build on each check in and the history is shown on a web page.

http://confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/CCNET/Welcome+to+CruiseControl.NET
https://hudson.dev.java.net/

For requesting new functionality you could use a ticketsing system, wiki or Google Wave any one of these should enable you to keep track of requirements.

Hope this helps.

Burt
A: 

Well, how small? I work on a team of 5, and we communicate well with IM, or just dropping by and talking. That being said, the team is pretty responsible, so you can trust everyone to carry their weight. I would suggest you use subversion for source control if your company doesn't have anything.

Steve
A: 

We're a team of 3 C# developers.

For version control, we use AnkhSVN, an open source SVN client that integrates with Visual Studio.

For project management, issue tracking and feature requests, we use Redmine.

Thomas Levesque
A: 

What tools/plugins do you use for checking in/out code?

Mercurial -- once you've used a DVCS, it's hard to imagine going back. Everybody uses their own favorite editor; usually, that's Emacs, which comes with support for many VCSs, including Mercurial.

how to communicate changes made to the code, how to make request for new functionality?

Changes are tracked in version control. You can look at the changesets as you pull them, or browse the web interface. Or just ask people at lunch what you're working on -- no developer is an island. New functionality is tracked, along with bugs, in the bug tracker.

How has your team solved this?

We're a small team using C#, but nothing here is specific to C# or small teams. I've used very similar systems with other size teams, and other languages/platforms.

Ken
A: 

We have a team of three and currently use Source Gear Vault for source control and Fogbugz for bug/feature tracking. Source Gear integrates into Visual Studio nicely and works over http which makes it easy to access from anywhere. Check ins and outs can be done directly in Visual Studio or a standalone client.

Source Gear also integrates with Fogbugz.

Used to use Visual Source safe and would never go back...

Jeff
A: 

I work on a small team of 1-5, depending on the project.

What tools/plugins do you use for checking in/out code?

We use Git with Github for new projects, and TFS for some legacy work.

I see a lot of people recommending a certain provider without telling you why. I have used TFS, SourceGear, SVN (a little), and Git. I prefer Git because it stays out of my way. Git is command-line based. My typical source control workflow is a handful of simple commands, but learning those commands took a few tries.

how to communicate changes made to the code, how to make request for new functionality?

We use Pivotal Tracker for story writing and organizing priority.

Matt S.
A: 

You might want to check out Elementool for integrated bug and test case tracking. There's also a forum feature for additional notes and requests.

Beth