Moving from VSS to SVN - with Web based Shared Working Copies

[c....@rgu.ac.uk]

Hi All,

We are just at the beginning of trying to move from VSS to SVN.  We've got our shiny SVN server all set up and running, but now it's the practical changes that are causing us the headache. We're trying to figure out how to move from VSS to SVN from our existing setup.

Currently we develop web applications using a shared development server, so in VSS files are 'checked out' to a developer, edited directly on the DEV shared area, run there while developing and then checked in.  Other developers can obviously see that those files are being changed so must avoid them.

If we move to SVN in this scenario, we have the obvious problem that you can't really have more than one person changing the shared working copy at once - it defeats the whole copy-modify-merge thing.

The obvious thing is to develop on a local working copy, however this has it's own headache - how on earth do you replicate a huge development server, the databases, application server configurations, interconnections with other systems, etc., for each developer on a standalone machine?

This must be an issue for anyone developing web based applications, so how do people deal with it out there?  Any pointers, sites discussing this or anything at all would be great!  

Our problem at the moment is the whole change to SVN seems insurmountable because of this, and it's difficult to see any incremental steps that we could take to get there.  Clearly we can't take three months out of 'ordinary work', just to completely revamp our entire development process and environment, so we need to somehow manage this is smaller stages. 

Any help gladly received!

Colin.

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RE: Re: Moving from VSS to SVN - with Web based Shared Working Copies

["Bicking, David (HHoldings, IT)" <Da...@thehartford.com>]

>From: Ryan Schmidt [mailto:subversion-2008c@ryandesign.com] 
>Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2008 2:48 PM
>
>On Aug 21, 2008, at 05:03, <c....@rgu.ac.uk> <c....@rgu.ac.uk>
>wrote:
>
>> We are just at the beginning of trying to move from VSS to SVN.   
>> We've got our shiny SVN server all set up and running, but now it's 
>> the practical changes that are causing us the headache. We're trying 
>> to figure out how to move from VSS to SVN from our existing setup.
>>
>> Currently we develop web applications using a shared development 
>> server, so in VSS files are 'checked out' to a developer, edited 
>> directly on the DEV shared area, run there while developing and then 
>> checked in.  Other developers can obviously see that those files are 
>> being changed so must avoid them.
>>
>> If we move to SVN in this scenario, we have the obvious problem that 
>> you can't really have more than one person changing the 
>shared working 
>> copy at once - it defeats the whole copy-modify-merge thing.
>>
>> The obvious thing is to develop on a local working copy, 
>however this 
>> has it's own headache - how on earth do you replicate a huge 
>> development server, the databases, application server 
>configurations, 
>> interconnections with other systems, etc., for each developer on a 
>> standalone machine?
>>
>> This must be an issue for anyone developing web based 
>applications, so 
>> how do people deal with it out there?  Any pointers, sites 
>discussing 
>> this or anything at all would be great!
>>
>> Our problem at the moment is the whole change to SVN seems 
>> insurmountable because of this, and it's difficult to see any 
>> incremental steps that we could take to get there.  Clearly we can't 
>> take three months out of 'ordinary work', just to completely revamp 
>> our entire development process and environment, so we need 
>to somehow 
>> manage this is smaller stages.
>

>We also didn't want to replicate the development server 
>environment on each developer's workstation, especially since 
>the server was Linux and the workstations were Windows. We 
>settled on keeping each developers' working copies in their 
>public_html folder in their home directory on the Linux 
>server, which developers would access via Samba and manipulate 
>using TortoiseSVN. There was a little bit of work to rewrite 
>our projects so they could run from an arbitrary server-side 
>directory, but after that this strategy worked nicely.

Re: Moving from VSS to SVN - with Web based Shared Working Copies

[Ryan Schmidt <su...@ryandesign.com>]

On Aug 21, 2008, at 05:03, <c....@rgu.ac.uk> <c....@rgu.ac.uk>  
wrote:

> We are just at the beginning of trying to move from VSS to SVN.   
> We've got our shiny SVN server all set up and running, but now it's  
> the practical changes that are causing us the headache. We're  
> trying to figure out how to move from VSS to SVN from our existing  
> setup.
>
> Currently we develop web applications using a shared development  
> server, so in VSS files are 'checked out' to a developer, edited  
> directly on the DEV shared area, run there while developing and  
> then checked in.  Other developers can obviously see that those  
> files are being changed so must avoid them.
>
> If we move to SVN in this scenario, we have the obvious problem  
> that you can't really have more than one person changing the shared  
> working copy at once - it defeats the whole copy-modify-merge thing.
>
> The obvious thing is to develop on a local working copy, however  
> this has it's own headache - how on earth do you replicate a huge  
> development server, the databases, application server  
> configurations, interconnections with other systems, etc., for each  
> developer on a standalone machine?
>
> This must be an issue for anyone developing web based applications,  
> so how do people deal with it out there?  Any pointers, sites  
> discussing this or anything at all would be great!
>
> Our problem at the moment is the whole change to SVN seems  
> insurmountable because of this, and it's difficult to see any  
> incremental steps that we could take to get there.  Clearly we  
> can't take three months out of 'ordinary work', just to completely  
> revamp our entire development process and environment, so we need  
> to somehow manage this is smaller stages.

At the web programming company where I worked, we didn't migrate from  
VSS to SVN -- we migrated from nothing to SVN. :) As in your  
situation, everyone was editing a shared "working copy" on the  
development server, except that we had no safeguards to ensure two  
developers weren't trying to work on the same file. Awful.

We also didn't want to replicate the development server environment  
on each developer's workstation, especially since the server was  
Linux and the workstations were Windows. We settled on keeping each  
developers' working copies in their public_html folder in their home  
directory on the Linux server, which developers would access via  
Samba and manipulate using TortoiseSVN. There was a little bit of  
work to rewrite our projects so they could run from an arbitrary  
server-side directory, but after that this strategy worked nicely.


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Re: Moving from VSS to SVN - with Web based Shared Working Copies

[Robert Graf-Waczenski <rg...@lsoft.com>]

c.jones@rgu.ac.uk wrote:
> If we move to SVN in this scenario, we have the obvious problem that you can't really have more than one person changing the shared working copy at once - it defeats the whole copy-modify-merge thing.
>
> The obvious thing is to develop on a local working copy, however this has it's own headache - how on earth do you replicate a huge development server, the databases, application server configurations, interconnections with other systems, etc., for each developer on a standalone machine?
>   

Well, we migrated from VSS to SVN a good while back and we in fact do 
replicate the full environment for each developer's machine. You already 
wrote yourself that your currently intended approach would defeat SVN's 
copy/modify/merge paradigm, so i suggest to go down the (initially) 
rocky road of replicating the setup on each developer's machine. This 
way, your developers are also much more involved in how all your 
components interact with each other and i bet that many of them will 
give you valuable feedback about your current system architecture.

To tell the truth, however, we had a similar approach back then with 
VSS, so our mileage varied a lot from yours, though. (Of course we had 
some issues, but those were not in the developer machine setup but 
rather that we were unable to migrate the old VSS history to SVN, so we 
ended up with a fresh SVN repository and the old VSS database still 
online in read-only mode. You apparently have no trouble in this area, 
so consider yourself lucky!)

Robert

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Re: Moving from VSS to SVN - with Web based Shared Working Copies

[Les Mikesell <le...@gmail.com>]

c.jones@rgu.ac.uk wrote:
>
> The obvious thing is to develop on a local working copy, however this has it's own headache - how on earth do you replicate a huge development server, the databases, application server configurations, interconnections with other systems, etc., for each developer on a standalone machine?
> This must be an issue for anyone developing web based applications, so how do people deal with it out there?  Any pointers, sites discussing this or anything at all would be great!  
> 
> Our problem at the moment is the whole change to SVN seems insurmountable because of this, and it's difficult to see any incremental steps that we could take to get there.  Clearly we can't take three months out of 'ordinary work', just to completely revamp our entire development process and environment, so we need to somehow manage this is smaller stages. 

You might start by converting your current shared development copy into 
a QA site.  Then sort out any parts that are mostly static or can be 
shared by the developer working copies (database connections, backend 
data services, etc.) to save resources.

You may find that modern desktops can match the server environment well 
enough for initial testing, followed by pre-release QA on the current 
dev setup and a procedure similar to what you currently use to release 
to production (something that takes care of any backend database/service 
connections, etc.).  If you are doing something exotic on the servers 
that desktops can't match you might be able to run separate instances of 
the web server per developer on different port numbers for testing on 
the current dev server, each with a view of the developer's working copy.

If everyone is used to working with a shared copy, a transition strategy 
might be to continue to share the dev site as a QA space where you do 
nothing but 'svn update' to pull in the changes to test, with all 
changes actually being done in separate working copies.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell@gmail.com


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