BI Architects uses TurtoiseSVN for version and source control

BI Architects (BIA) is the Business Intelligence specialist in Commodity Trading and uses the following tools:

• Microsoft: development and database tools for developing solutions
• Clarizen Online Project Management software: project management
• Turtoise Subversion: revision control, version control and source control software

In this blog I would like to write about source/version control and the way we handle source/version control within our company. As mentioned we use TurtoiseSVN. TortoiseSVN is an easy-to-use SCM / source control software for Microsoft Windows and Apache. It is implemented as a Windows shell extension, which makes it integrate seamlessly into the Windows explorer.

It is developed under the GPL. Which means it is completely free, including the source code. But just in case you don't know the GPL too well: you can use TortoiseSVN to develop commercial applications or just use it in your company without any restrictions.

TortoiseSVN is a Subversion client and therefore has all the features of Subversion itself, including:

• Most current CVS features.
• Directories, renames, and file meta-data are versioned.
• Commits are truly atomic.
• Branching and tagging are cheap (constant time) operations.
• Efficient handling of binary files.

BI-Architects mainly uses the following TurtoiseSVN functionality:

• New solutions are created as folders in the TurtoiseSVN database.
• Via the update functionality we update our local instance with the newest (committed) database version of the solution.
• Via the commit functionality we store the updated or improved version (including the end of day situation) in the subversion database.
• Release versions are controled by using tag functionality

With using TurtoiseSVN BIA has control on software development. More information on TurtoiseSVN can be found here.