Submersion into Subversion

These days, when we hear brand names such as Apple, Microsoft, and Google, we think of one software, one hardware, one product. We hardly stop to think of what lies past the name, past the "one." But in fact, it is a multitude of people who makes a product, not just one company. And they make a product in time for its launch date, continuing to provide updates and support afterwards. Let's focus on the software for now. How is it possible not to transform into some wild green-eyed lost soul due to millions of lines of code, written not just by you, but by others as well? The answer lies in configuration management.

Configuration management tracks the state or configuration of a system at any point in time so that changes made to the system are logged and different versions of the system, old or new, can be utilized for different purposes. Configuration management aims to solve the issues that arise when multiple programmers work on a single software product simultaneously. Even with simple compilation or verification issues, the quick fixes may not be apparent until hours or days into debugging. But with a configuration management tool, this could be avoided, since the previous version of the system, before the incriminating changes were made, could be downloaded.

Google Project Hosting and SmartSVN for Mac (TortoiseSVN for Windows) is an excellent duo for amateur developers to kickoff with configuration management. Add Robocode or a working project into the mix along with classmates or friends for committers, then you could host your very own project in no time. Including easily accessible User and Developer Guides is the standard and allows others to know that you intend to treat them and your work on a professional level. The checkout URL repository on Google Project Hosting appears under the Source tab, and Subversion (SmartSVN or TortoiseSVN) provides the host and committers with commit and add access. The Changes link under the Source tab and the Updates link under the Project Home tab display any changes made on the site.

Overall, this was quite a refreshing learning activity and was none too difficult at all. The only minor hurdle was the initial attempt to get my project files uploaded to the trunk directory of my robocode-bma-[nameofrobot] project. Otherwise, brief communication with my classmates and watching the screencasts made this an easy dive into configuration management.