Source control and nightly build uploads

[Vincent Hernandez]

The topic pretty much speaks for itself. Any pointers?

Edit: What I mean by "the topic speaks for itself" is "My question is regarding source control and nightly build uploads. Does anyone do that?"
[ February 08, 2005: Message edited by: Vincent Hernandez ]

[Josh Allen]

Originally posted by Vincent Hernandez:
The topic pretty much speaks for itself. Any pointers?

Troll.

[Vincent Hernandez]

I'm not trolling. It's just that I'm wondering if anyone does the above mentioned, and if so, what tools do they use (preferrably free), and what's their strategy with it for this SCJD project.

I don't think this is a troll post. I'm not saying "you should use X and Y or you're a Z".

If the admin feels this is a bad post, please take it down. I'm not asking about the topic in general, but how they would apply it specifically for this project. Thank you.

[Andrew Monkhouse]

Hi Vincent,

No problems with your post, although the "build uploads" part of your question did make me question whether this was in the correct forum - after all, where are you uploading to?

A version control system is a great idea. Get used to using one now, and you will be more prepared for using one on larger projects. And you may find that even in a project as small as the SCJD assignment, you may wish to revert to an earlier, working, version of your code and/or work out what your changes were over time - all of which a version control system can help you with.

Personally, I am a fan of CVS - the server is free on most platforms, it is easy to use, and there are clients for it integrated into most of the popular IDEs as well as standalone clients.

A project called Subversion is getting a lot of attention at the moment - you might want to check it out as an alternative to CVS.

As for nightly builds - if you are using something like JUnit in combination with Ant, you should find this very easy to set up and run.

Regards, Andrew

[Jeroen Wenting]

http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/bookshelf/index.html several ebooks that will serve you well (also print editions if you prefer those).
Books on CVS, Subversion, project automation, and unit testing.

[Jeff Bosch]

Thanks for the posts and the links.

I too am using the SCJD for more than just the certification. Because I have a background in small embedded development using C and assembly, a lot of the OO stuff is relatively new to me. (I've done some small projects in Java and C++.)

So, I'm using SCJD to practice OOA/D with UML, development with Eclipse, testing with JUnit, building with Ant or just my own build scripts, and management with CVS. When I finish the submission, I want it to be extensive and complete enough to act as a major section of my technical portfolio, right next to my embedded work. (I also have an extensive tech writing portfolio.)

[Frans Janssen]

Hi Vincent,

For what it's worth: I used Microsoft Visual Sourcesafe for version control. It's probably one of the simpler source control systems out there.

My choice to use it was not a concious one though: I used it because we use it at the work place and I hade a semi-legal copy lying around anyway

But it does the job and since I did not revert to any previous version of my code, I could have done without it in hindsight.

I have no experience with nightly build uploads though.

Frans.

[Robert Hayes]

I went to one of Mike Clark's talks on project automation in Novemeber. I pretty much got sold on CruiseControl.

Personally I like to use Subversion for version control.