Freeware Development Tools

[cjowsey]

Does anyone know of or have experience of freeware or very cheap version control systems or bug tracking utilities/databases for VB developers? Coming from being out of full time work for a long time and built a worked on a great product, we need to manage the environment properly without much available cash.

Advice of products to avoid would also be appreciated.

Thanks,
Clive

 

[chiph]

You can use Perforce (

http://www.perforce.com)

for free with a 2 license limit. It integrates into VB, too.

Having used Visual Source Safe for a long time (since it was owned by One Tree Software), I've discovered that it has its limits.

Otherwise you're looking at CVS, which I've never liked.

Chip H.

 

[cjowsey]

Thanks Chip,

I'll check out Perforce. Two licenses will be fine until we have enough income to really tighten the environment.

I also briefly used Source Safe back in the One Tree days. It was easier to use than PVCS, but that is not a very positive statement.

Regards,
Clive

 

[chiph]

Perforce's teminology is a little strange, but if you read their whitepaper about concurrent development, it all makes sense.

For the lurkers:

The idea is that you want to create a "baseline" whenever you start a new version of your product. Each developer then creates a "branch" where they do their work. Periodically, the developers will merge their changes back into the baseline (usually using WinDiff or a tool like Araxis Merge), which is when any source-level conflicts are resolved. At some point the product is released, and the baseline enters the maintenance phase. A new baseline is created for further development and the whole thing starts over.

Chip H.