Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion

Version control on dual-boot system? (XP/Linux)

(1/3) > >>

Mandork:
I'm sure this is a really stupid question, but I thought I'd give it a try anyhow.

I finally took the plunge and reformatted my laptop hard drive and set up partitions to dual boot, with a single fat32 "data" partition.  I haven't installed the Linux part yet (trying to decide between Fedora Core and Ubuntu) but I am setting up the Windows system to be more organized than it was before. 

After trying out FileHamster (mentioned in this thread https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=10212.0) and having a look at Tortoise SVN, I am starting to think that a more "proper" version control system would be a good idea.  Syncing and so on proved to be a pain in the butt, and because I tend to generate scads of changes in my PhD documents (in Word, LaTeX, Access, OOo, GRASS GIS, GIMP, etc, etc, etc...) I can easily get lost in the changes.  This has led me to screw up at least one important document in my file cleanup frenzy before I reformatted the hard drive.

So, the dumb question is this:  can I set up a Subversion system on my laptop to track changes that can be accessed by either Linux or XP?  It's not entirely clear to me whether both systems can understand changes made in a single set of documents.  Does anyone have a good solution for keeping one set of data files and using either operating system to modify them?

tinjaw:
You can store the documents on a subversion server not on your computer. For example, get a Dreamhost account and use the subversion server that comes with it. Another option is to make the data partition FAT32 and create the repo as a file-based repo (not DB-based) and both Linux and Windows svn clients should handle it just fine.

Carol Haynes:
You have to be careful with some file formats.

The only ones I have heard of problems with are MS proprietary formats (so probably would affect you) but back in the days of Office 2000 I read reports of file corruption when using the SAME (!!!) version of Office applications on different systems,

I can't imagine why that should happen but if you are editing the same file with different tools under different OSes there may be issues unless they are totally generic formats (such as JPEG).

Mandork:
FWIW I would mostly be working with LaTeX/text files and/or OpenOffice when I want to switch between systems.  One of the main reasons why I wanted to dual boot was that the GIS programs (GRASS in particular) seem to be a lot easier to use in Linux, their native system; various ports exist but I always had trouble with them.

tinjaw, I installed Tortoise SVN (in windows) and just created the repository in whatever the native format is, on the fat32 partition.  What do you use to access the repository?  I still haven't tried it in Linux yet.

wilfrednilsen:
You can store the documents on a subversion server not on your computer.
-tinjaw (February 29, 2008, 10:28 AM)
--- End quote ---

What is the difference?

I run a subversion server on my PC and on my MAC. This is very easy to setup. If you like, I can post the instructions needed to setup the svn server.

I trust svn is secure, but I only allow access on the Intranet. I have other external users accessing the repos, but they can only access the repos via a HTTPS tunnel.

This is also easy to setup.


BTW, I have given up on using a dual boot. I use vmware exclusively. I upgraded my ram and run vmware in Windogs. Works great.



For private use, running a subversion server is dirt simple.

BTW, I have not tried a non cygwin version on Windogs, but that should be easy. I am sure you can find the exe files on the Internet.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page