Team Collaboration Using Subversion (SVN)
- Preparation

Before you can share design projects within a team, you need to set up Subversion itself. Here are the preparation steps:

  1. Install Subversion
  2. Set up a Server
  3. Set files for Subversion to ignore
  4. Create a master repository (optional)
  5. Set up authentication on the repository (optional)

1. Install Subversion

Install Subversion with an SVN Client on the server that will contain the file repositories and on each team member's computer.

Many clients are available but we highly recommend TortoiseSVN. Like Subversion itself, this is a freely available Open Source project. It works well on Windows Vista, XP and NT (and other platforms) and integrates with Windows Explorer.

TortoiseSVN is available from: http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org

2. Set up a Server

You will need to set up server software so that your team members can access the repository from their own machines across the Local Area Network (LAN) or over the Internet.

The TortoiseSVN documentation contains excellent instructions on how to set up an Apache Web Server for use with Subversion and, also, the simpler svnserve option.

svnserve is not normally included as part of the TortoiseSVN install but is available from: http://www.collab.net/downloads/subversion/

The collab.net installation has the option of setting up the server for you. For security reasons, when setting up the server, be sure to designate a root folder where all of your repositories will reside (for example, "C:\svn\").

3. Set files for Subversion to ignore

Set Subversion to ignore all files with the .gdws extension. These files are new in GUI Design Studio version 3.4 and contain user settings that were previously stored in the .gdp file but don't need to be shared or version controlled (such as the last set of open files a particular user was working on).

You can normally do this through a global setting in your SVN Client and you will need to do this on each machine, including the server. It should only take a few seconds in each case and only needs to be done once.

Here's where to do this in the TortoiseSVN Settings:

File Ignore options in TortoiseSVN

It's also a good idea to add "Thumbs.db" to the global ignore list. These files are generated by Windows whenever you switch a folder view into Thumbnails mode and they rarely need to be shared or placed under Subversion control.

4. Create a master repository (optional)

If you want to place all of your GUI Design projects into a single repository (recommended) and you don't already have a suitable master repository that you use for other projects, then you will need to create a new repository.

Create a suitable folder within the designated root folder on your server (see Step 2). For example, this might be "C:\svn\GUIDesigns\".

Use the "Create Repository" command in your SVN client to create a repository within the new folder. With TortoiseSVN, you can do this from the right-click context menu on the folder:

TortoiseSVN repository creation command

New files and sub-folders will appear within the folder:

Files and folders within a fresh repository

5. Set up authentication on the repository (optional)

If you have created a master repository (Step 4) then you will need to set up user names and passwords so that your team members can access the server repository from their own machines.

For detailed instructions on how to do this with both an Apache server and svnserve, please refer to the TortoiseSVN documentation.

If you are using svnserve, the simplest approach is to:

  1. Open the "/conf/svnserve.conf" file in a text editor and replace these lines:
    # anon-access = read
    # auth-access = write
    # password-db = passwd

    With these lines:
    anon-access = none
    auth-access = write
    password-db = passwd

    Then save the file.
  2. Open the "/conf/passwd" file in a text editor and add an entry into the "[users]" section for each user:
    [users]
    Harry = harryspassword
    Sally = sallyspassword

    Then save the file. If you add more users later, you can simply edit this file again.

 

< Overview

Project Setup >