Version control for PHP Developement

Question

Hello,

I have been hearing a lot about the advantages of using a version control system and would like to try one. I was doing freelance web development in PHP for the past 2 years, two months back I hired two more programmer to help me. I will be hiring one more person soon. We maintain 4 websites, all of which are my own, which are continuously being edited by one of us. I learned PHP by myself and have never worked in any other firms. Hence I am new to version control, unit testing and all.

Currently, we have development servers on our workstations. When we edit a particular section of a site, we download the code for that particular section (say /news/ or /movies/ or /wallpapers/ ) from the production server to the dev server, makes the changes locally and uploads to the production server (no code review / testing). Because of this, our dev server is always out of date from our prod server. Occasionally, this also create problem when one of us forgets to download the latest copy from prod and overwrites the last change. I know this is very very foolish, but currently our prod server is the only copy that has all the updates and latest changes.

Can anyone please suggest which is the best version control system for me? I am more interested in distributed version control, since we don't have a central backup for all our code. I read about Mercurial and Git and found that Mercurial is used in several large open source projects by Mozilla, Sun, Symbian etc. So which one do you think is better for me? Not only version control, if there are any other package that I can use to make my current setup better, please mention that too :)

Thanks and Regards, Vinod Mohan

Answer 1

You can use SVN, Git, Mercurial.

The biggest challenge is having everyone be disciplined in using version control and not getting lazy.

Answer 2

Version control is an incredible tool even when you're working alone, and when you are working with someone else it's indispensable. I would recommend using git. It's very fast, has a really great set of available tools, and of course has github.com. Mercurial is basically just as good as git, but it runs a little slower and doesn't have github.

For why to use git, please read http://whygitisbetterthanx.com/

Here's a nice-looking tutorial on getting started with git: http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~blynn/gitmagic/index.html

Answer 3

It sounds like Git can accomplish your goals quite well. As it's distributed, it's excellent for working locally since you can perform most operations (commit, revert, diff, patch) without connecting to a central server. You can also avoid that ugly moment of someone pushing new code to production while someone else is working on it, and then having the complicated task of merging those two versions of the code together (git provides a useful tool for doing this called rebase).

You noted there's some big projects using Hg (Mercurial), but there's some pretty big ones using Git, like the Linux Kernel, X.org, Android and Debian.

I use git for all my sites: it's lightning fast, efficient, and easy to use.

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Edit: If you want to get into using Git, I'd recommend doing some reading before jumping right in. Starting off on the wrong foot can have some terrible implications later on. If you follow an Agile Workflow, you might want to check this out. Here's a website I learned most of my Git know-how from.

Answer 4

Thanks a lot for the quick answers. So are everyone for Git? No Hg supporters? :)

Answer 5

Definitely Mercurial. Although you can use either Git or SVN, Mercurial is better for two reasons:

1. Vs Git: Good integration with Windows.
2. Vs SVN: It's distributed.

If you don't want to run yourself a Mercurial server (which is pretty easy anyway), there are many services available. Kiln + FogBugz is an EXCELLENT combination. There's also CodeBaseHQ (also supports Git and SVN), Bitbucket, and many more.

Before you jump onto it I strongly recommend you read at least Joel Spolsky's tutorial, but I strongly recommend you also read Mercurial: The Definitive Guide.

Answer 6

I am sorry, I had no intention of starting a DVCS holy war. I am going to try Git.

Answer 7

Yes, version control will help. To get started, I see two important issues for you:

• hosted or self-managed? Do you want to host this yourself on a server, or want a service to take care of it for you? There are reasons to go either way, but if you're not that into managing the server look for a hosted option.

• SVN or Git There are others, but these are the top open source contenders.

Pros and Cons (my opinion):

SVN: Good tutorials and fairly easy to get up-to-speed with. The training requirement is small (I've done a bit of it). SVN works really well with a co-located team, lots of projects, etc. With a limited number of branches (you may not need any), it is solid. There are plenty of integrations with other tools.

Git: Getting started can be a little rougher than with SVN. Some of the docs are good, but lots are geared assume a rather thorough understanding of the internals. Once you get the hang of it, it has great flexibility, but I've seen almost everyone who has started with it really stumble when beginning. Even after working with it for months, people debate the best patterns to use. It's really sweet for 1-person projects (where you want to track history), and for distributed projects like GitHub. I use Git even for small co-located teams, because I enjoy the speed and flexibility.

Given what you say about your team, though, I'd probably recommend trying SVN. There will be better resources to help you get going, and you'll be less likely to get frustrated with it.

Hope this helps.