Archive for Subversion tag

DiffMerge is free, try it with AnkhSVN

June 2007 – June 2011 • .NET (, , , ) • 7,767 views • 5 responses

SourceGear, known for their Vault source control software, are giving away their three-way diff & merge tool DiffMerge for Windows, Mac and Unix.

DiffMerge has a clear interface and supports for file-type specific rule-sets that allow you to decide how to deal with white-space, line-endings, encoding etc.

I’ll be using it instead of my trusty KDiff for a couple of weeks to see how things go.

To use DiffMerge in AnkhSVN head into the Tools > AnkhSVN > Edit the AnkhSVN Configuration menu option and then paste each of the following command-lines into the associated configuration option.

DiffExePath

C:\Program Files\SourceGear\DiffMerge\DiffMerge.exe "%base" "%mine" /t1="Base version" /t2="My version"

MergeExePath

C:\Program Files\SourceGear\DiffMerge\DiffMerge.exe "%base" "%theirs" "%mine" /r="%merged" /t1="Base version" /t2="Their version" /t3="My version"

Alternatively you might want to check out Trevor Green’s instructions on using DiffMerge with TortoiseSVN if you are not yet sold on AnkhSVN and it’s Visual Studio integration.

[)amien

Subversion talk at Guernsey Developer User Group

May 2007 – March 2008 • Guernsey (, , ) • 993 views • 3 responses

This presentation is now available on-line.

I will be giving a talk entitled “Change management with Subversion” at the Guernsey Developer User Group later this month.

The talk will start with the reasons for change management and the terminology Subversion uses before delving into a typical work cycle. The AnkhSVN client for Visual Studio and the TortoiseSVN client for Windows Explorer will be demonstrated and various other points covered such as when to branch, when to merge, what server options exist etc.

If you are interested in source control, team collaboration or release management then feel free to come along.

This GDUG meeting takes place on the 24th of May at the Guernsey Training Agency’s office above the Guernsey Post Office in Smith Street. As usual the meeting will start at 6pm and the talk will likely start shortly after that and run to around 30-45 minutes (I’m still finalising the content). Keep an eye on the GDUG site for the official agenda.

This location is the venue for the tonight annual general meeting of the Guernsey section of British Computer Society. I believe this particular BCS event is only open to BCS members but if you are a member then this is a gentle reminder. At least 4 of us from the GDUG will be in attendance.

[)amien

AnkhSVN 1.0 released (Subversion plug-in for Visual Studio)

January 2007 – October 2007 • .NET, Icons (, , ) • 2,642 views • 2 responses

AnkhSVN 1.0 has been released!

If you use Visual Studio 2003 or 2005 and are currently either using the TortoiseSVN shell extension (or Subversion command line) then you would do well to see just how much more productive having source-control available from within the IDE can be.

Thanks go to Arild and mac|gyver for all their hard work on this great open source project.

Hope you enjoy my icons too!

[)amien

My .NET toolkit

May 2005 – March 2008 • .NET (, , ) • 1,010 views • one response

Every developer has his own favourite set of development tools and libraries that he’s come to rely on. Here’s a round-up of some I use or am looking at.

Actively using

  • CodeSmith – Now in version 3 with it’s own IDE this tool lets you write templates that are executed against database structures. The C# ASP.Net style syntax is easy to get to grips with, allowing you to easily generate stored procedures, database scripts, class templates, simple object-relational-mappings, collection classes and the works. Will be less useful when .Net 2.0 arrives with Generics support but until then snap it up. A free version is available.
  • NullableTypes – A shortcoming in .Net 1.1 is the lack of null support for value types outside the SQL Server name space. Until this is addressed in .Net 2.0 then check out this open-source library that does a sterling job. (Disclosure, I’ve contributed to this project)
  • Subversion – A great source control tool, the replacement for the ageing CVS product. Gaining some good support now you can run the server directly or inside Apache. Combine with TortoiseSVN for Explorer shell based integration or AnkhSVN for integration inside the Visual Studio IDE.
  • NUnit – Unit testing is a great way to prevent regressions and NUnit is both simple to learn and fast to use.
  • VisualStyles – I’ve mentioned this before but .Net’s support for XP themes is abysmal with drawing problems all over the place especially when it comes to tab controls. VisualStyles is a free component you just drop on your form that magically fixes everything.

On my radar

  • Trac – Provides wiki, issue tracking and source browsing over the top of a Subversion repository. I installed on my server at the weekend and it looks quite promising although its convoluted installation procedure had far too many dependencies for my liking. Will be testing this on a project I’m working on to see how it goes.
  • PageMethods – Previously called SharpURL’s but now free and without an expiration this provides a way of identifying methods into a web page and the parameters they require.

I’m also on the lookout for a replacement for my object-relational CodeSmith templates I knocked up a while back and have been refining since. While they are functional and incredibly fast I’m now wanting features they don’t provide such as database independence, lazy loading and locking patterns.

[)amien