Thread

I have this idea to set up subversion and do version control on my expression engine project. We have three people working on the project now, with more being added. Right now we are using Dreamweaver’s checkin/checkout system, which is ok but not totally safe.

If I can get my host provider to install subversion for us, does anyone have any advice on how to get everything working - SVN, expression engine. We already edit our files in third party editors, through ftp, so that step is taken care of. But is there anything particular to expression engine I need to know to get this going?

Thanks.

i wanted to wake this post up…  we are still looking for version control that works with external template editing - so, that means, the expression engine version control isn’t as useful because it doesn’t happen when I am only editing files externally.

Thanks.

Hi Negs,

Have you maybe thought about using a remotely hosted repo like Springloops? One of their plans has an ‘auto update remote server on commit’ option using FTP/sFTP that might work ok. Perhaps you could:

1. Each of your runs a local server using MAMP/WAMP
2. You create an initial import using propset svn:ignore to remove config and core files etc
3. Each of your checks out the initial into a MAMP/WAMP directory

Now, each of you can work on templates/plugins/extensions etc and then commit as required. Your live server would be updated automatically and you can roll back to a previous version directly via Springloops if necessary.

Would that work?

Cheers

Dry

Hi… Thanks for your advice, Drylouvre. This is extremely helpful. In fact I think this is the direction we are moving - I was in contact with a company called beanstalk today, and it seems like they provide a similar service.

It helps a lot to see your workflow description.

Let me ask you… is it common to have an intermediary “live” server, that works the same as the actual production server but isn’t the one people come to? I was just thinking that you system will work perfectly, except that I wouldn’t want to update directly to the production server with out making sure everything works well.

Also, here is a question - Our site has a LOT of images as content. Would we need to include those in the initial import, and store all these images on our local computers?

How do we test-as-we-go? As you most likely know, most of web development “testing” involves uploading, refreshing, and seeing if your changes were effective. Can we still work this way.

Again, thanks for your post - it seems like this is not the most common way to use expression engine, but I really feel it makes sense for my project and I really want to work out the proper details.

Cheers!

Hi Negs,

I have to tell you that this isn’t our workflow. I was just trying to come up with a possible solution. I do use SVN but for non-EE work. I would guess though that you don’t need to have an intermediate server because any of you could just do an SVN update and test everything on your local WAMP/MAMP server. Maybe you just don’t use the ‘remote update on commit’ thing. As soon as you are happy with progress just do a normal FTP transfer from your local to the live server.

As far as the images go it’s up to you but I would think about adding all the existing images to the initial import and checkout and then even if anyone adds a new one the only time you will have to transfer it would be on the next update/commit cycle.

As far as the testing goes that would be all done on your local machines after an SVN update. You’d all be able to test the latest version independently before it got pushed to the live server.

As I say, this is not how we do things but it seems as though it may work for your situation. Hope this helps.

Cheers

Dry

Thanks Drylouvre, so you don’t use SVN for EE stuff? If you have three developers working on the same project doesn’t that get complicated to integrate?

Hi Wondermonkey,

We are a small company and in any event we generally only have one or max two people working on a site at any one time so the issue never arises.

Cheers

Dry