Source control for computers without open ports

Question

We are a group of 3 people with computers who are inside a network that very closed and we don't have access to a bunch of ports. It would be beneficial to have a solution where we can also access the code from home.

Is there a source control software that works well in a situation like this?

Answer 1

SVN can be set up over http, which should work in most cases. It should even handle the case that all port 80 traffic is passed through a proxy that requires the traffic to be actual http traffic and not just anything that happens to be configured to use port 80.

To be able to work from home this assumes that your repository is located outside of the restricted network.

Answer 2

SourceGear's Vault works well over regular HTTP (although it cost money for the multi-user version). I've been able to put it up on a shared hosting server and have several people access it through their default webservice-based API.

Answer 3

If you only have a single port open, you can use it for an ssh tunnel for whatever you like, and then be free in your choice of a source control system. May be you'll need some external server out of your network to host this.

Answer 4

I'm using Mercurial along with Dropbox to have access to my source control both at home and at work. Are you allowed to install software on the computers you are using? If so, perhaps this would work for you too.

1. Install Mercurial, Google it since I'm not allowed to post more than 1 link
2. Install Dropbox, Google it, and get an account each. It's free for 2 GB of data and runs via port 80, same as a web browser.
3. Create a shared folder (from the Dropbox web interface)
4. Place your source code in the shared folder and make it into a Mercurial repository
5. Get to know Mercurial from the Quick Start and work away.

To get access at home, just install Mercurial and Dropbox on your home computers and log in with the same Dropbox account.

Any changed files will be automatically pushed from one computer to another. I use the Dropbox repository as the main repository, and clone a working copy from there while I work. Once I'm satisfied with my changes, I'll push them to the Dropbox repository. Your friends can then pull those changes into their own working copies when they want to.

Answer 5

I'd recommend using Subversion over HTTPS. Given HTTPS will encrypt the data packets, pretty much all networking hardware, firewalls, etc by default leave port 443 (HTTPS) open since there is no way to peek inside encrypted packets and block undesired traffic.