Version control has been around long enough that even people who don’t work in IT are accustomed to it. A few weeks ago I was talking to a friend about “source control” and she asked what that meant. I explained how it works, and she said, “Oh, like SharePoint document libraries.” That made me happy.
While we IT developers have been using source code control for what feels like eons, some of us don’t think about using it at home. For a lot of the folks coming from the world of Visual SourceSafe, source control’s primary benefit is sharing files among team members; ditto for the document library check-out function that my SharePoint-using friend pointed out.
But as homegrown software projects grow more and more complex, it becomes even more important to have a source control solution for those projects. Such began my search for a source code management (SCM) tool. I knew up front what my basic features are:
- Version control
- Merging
- Branching
- Visual Studio integration
- Scalability (needs to support more users someday)
That’s not too much to ask, right? A quick Google search for “free version control” turned up Git, Mercurial, and Subversion. (There were other choices, but they were free only for open source projects.) At work, we use SourceGear Fortress, and I’ve been a user of Visual Studio Team Foundation Server for many years, but those products have costs, and for my simple projects at home, I wanted to minimize my cash outlay.
What I found with Git, Mercurial, and Subversion is that they are excellent tools but are way more complicated than what I need. I really want something with the relative simplicity of Visual SourceSafe but the power of something more like Subversion; this product does not exist without a cost. I really like Vault, but man, $249 for a single license?
I have a license for Visual Studio TFS, but it’s way overkill for just one user. I’d need to run it in a Virtual Server environment and that’s a lot more than I need.
Right after I decided to bite the bullet and use Subversion, I went to close the tab containing SourceGear’s website and something caught my eye:
A full-featured 30-day evaluation is available at no charge — and Vault is always free for single users.
Free for single users? Why didn’t I see that sooner?
Thus ends my quest for a SCM tool that is a) free b) easy to use and c) scalable. If I’m someday able to add another developer to my home project, then I can surely shell out the 249 bucks for an extra license. The Visual Studio integration is tight and I’m very used to it from my day job.
Please note: I’m not trying to slam SVN, Git, or Mercurial. Those are awesome SCM tools. But for the single user like myself, they’re overkill.
What personal SCM tool do you use? What do you use it for?
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