Best Versioning System for R

Question

I have a plethora of both short and long pieces of R code that I would like to track as they evolve.

Does anyone have any recommendation or experience using version-control software with R?

Answer 1

Subversion or Git would be my recommendations. I don't think the effectiveness of the versioning system depends on the source code you put in it. R shouldn't be any different from Java or C# that way.

Answer 2

There's nothing unique about R that would drive a version control system decision. There are many R projects hosted on Github (in Git) and on Google Code (in Mercurial or Subversion). R-Forge (http://r-forge.r-project.org/) uses SVN.

You may want to have a look at this question for some views on the modern source controlsystems: Git, Mercurial, and Bazaar.

Assuming that you will use either Git, Mercurial, or SVN, I would suggest having a look at Github. It has many very nice features for collaboration.

Answer 3

Fossil is wonderfully easy to set up and quickly start using. It also includes a web interface, issue tracker and a wiki, all built-in to the single executable. Fossil is the version control system for SQLite (written by the same author) and runs on Mac, Win and Linux.

Answer 4

I personally use and strongly suggest Eclipse with the StatET plugin combined with Subclipse for subversioning.

Answer 5

Use

• whatever your colleagues, friends, ... use --- most systems are technically equivalent and you want to foster rather than hinder collaboration

• whatever is supported in the editor or IDE you use most

so as ever so often it comes down to network effects --- popular choices create more users which creates more support in tools etc.

R itself does not care. Source code is just text. Personally, I like SVN a lot and use it at home, at work, at R-Forge, on Google Code, on Sourceforge, ... R Core also uses SVN but as I said, it does not really matter. Your choice, your headaches when you need to admin or fix things.