Keeping Track of Changed System Code

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ksberg
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Keeping Track of Changed System Code

Post by ksberg »

MODERATOR'S NOTE: This topic was split from the "Imagining the Dream Testing Software" topic. This particular post was in response to the request for a feature to keep track of changes made to systems.


Ted
Try using a version control system (like RCS, CVS or subversion). It actually helps on tracking what, who, how and when.
What a great idea! I keep other C++/Java source under version management, but never considered trading code (duh!).

Thanks!

Kevin
Ted
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Re: Source Mgmt for Trading Code

Post by Ted »

ksberg wrote:Ted
Try using a version control system (like RCS, CVS or subversion). It actually helps on tracking what, who, how and when.
What a great idea! I keep other C++/Java source under version management, but never considered trading code (duh!).

Thanks!

Kevin
You're more than welcome. I recently switched over to subversion ( http://subversion.tigris.org ) for two reasons that are escpecially helpful in my eyes: With svn you can put whole directories under version control, not just single files. And checking out doesn't lock the repository.

Now I wish to have my svn repositories in TheBrain ( www.thebrain.com ) with repository access in NetSnippets ( www.netsnippets.com ) - but maybe we should open a thread "Tools for optimizing routine work". Would be interesting to see which real good helpers are out there to be discovered.

Best,
Ted
Dan G

Post by Dan G »

Hey Ted,

I am not a programmer. I got into simple programming through trading, not the other way around as many people have around here. For me, any new computer skills have to be learned from scratch - this means valuable time not spent looking at trading.

I am going to go through the book on subversion and maybe attempt to implement it. It might be simple to experienced computer jocks, but I assure you it has comfused me (see I can't even spell anymore!). It's not what I really want to do. I want the program to do it for me.

All this complaining aside, it will probably be really useful and I'll be glad I did it. Thanks for the pointer. Any suggestions an how to set this thing up?

That 'tools for routine work' thread would be really interesting.
Ted
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Post by Ted »

Mike,

setting subversion (svn) up? Hmmm, depends on your operating system. On Unix / Linux machines this goes like this: ./configure && ./make && ./make install

Assuming you are on a Windows box, I have to admit that I have no idea. A quick google revealed there are pre-compiled Windows-binaries around. You may want to ask either on the tortoise (see below) or the svn user mailing-list.

A nice tool seems to be TortoiseSVN ( http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org ), which integrates svn nicely into the normal Windows-Explorer. As far as I know, there's also an installation guide for svn under Windows from this project available.

Learning version control is not this diffucult, and svn makes it easy. Just imagine svn as a time-machine that lets you go back in time to a previous state of your documents. Or enter a parallel-world, where your documents live a different life. With such a software you don't lose history, and the all too often "I'll just do a small change" errors are now recoverable.

Hope this helps for a start, if not: Yell!
Ted
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Post by Forum Mgmnt »

If anyone is interested in this concept, there are a couple of places that host Subversion for you so you don't have to be that technically saavy to use it. Basically, you don't need to do any installation with these services since the hosting company does it for you.

You will need to install the the TortoiseSVN product which has a normal Windows Installer and takes about a minute to install.

www.cvsdude.org - I use these guys. Heard about them when checking out the TradeMagic site and noticed a favorable comment (many thanks to Dierk Droth!).

www.wush.com - They do the same thing and also give you a web site.

Using cvsdude.org you can get a free account you can try out indefinitely, it's only limited by a small amount of data that can be uploaded, but for things like Trading Recipes system files, this would be great.

TortoiseSVN is easy to use and seems to work pretty well.

These tools are easier to use than the documentation would indication because many of the feature aren't necessary for most of the benefits but are there to support relatively complicated development efforts.

I highly recommend Subversion, I switched from CVS, and have used Perforce, and Visual Sourcesafe in the past. Subversion is better than any of them from my perspective.

- Forum Mgmnt
Roscoe
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Post by Roscoe »

While not in the same league as the Subversion crowd, this is how I keep track of systems (and components of systems) under development:

Each system gets a version/revision number placed in the code header, starting with alpha characters until it actually works (a.1, a.2, a.3, etc) then moving to numbers from then on (1.0, 1.1, 1.2, etc) with a brief description alongside each new version ("added xyz", etc). The same methodolgy is applied to any standard components - as an example I have a few "standard" stops that get dropped into most systems, and they have their own version numbering as well.

I keep a set of "Systems Library" folders where I park a copy of each rev, although I have to rename the files to do this (by adding the rev number after the suffix).

Not very sophisticated but it works. The idea is based on document control procedures from my old field, heavy engineering.
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