Our first real production experience with Source Control came a year
ago when we started to cooperate in software development with two
other outsourcing companies – one of them is located in Europe. Since
Visual SourceSafe and similar tools at the time could be used only in
the intranet environment, we started with task assignment and sharing
files through e-mails, trying to organize distributed development and
keep synchronization of files. That was a nightmare! We had a serious
problem with this organization. Soon, we had to find a better and more
efficient solution. Luckily, we got a trial version of Source Control,
a product of Ilumnis ltd, from their web site www.ilumnis.com
Shortly after, we were very satisfied with its features and it was
exactly what we needed, so we decided to buy Source Control and we
started to use it for software development. Here are the main benefits
of this tool:
· Speed. It's fast. The code behind this tool was recently rewritten
for the latest version and it is as fast as lightning. You don't need
super fast internet to use it. It has high compression for file
transferring and it uses post backs only when it's needed, not on
every click, as some web applications do.
· Ease of use. Very intuitive graphical user interface keeps your
impression that you work with windows application, not with web
application and simple web controls. I wish other tools that we use
are as half intuitive as this product is.
· No installation or support for configuration needed. It is just not
there and it is one of the very important features to us. We do not
want our developers to waist hours in configuration and installation
of new features, updates, versions problems and the like.
· Application uses SQL Server 2000 database, but you don't need to
have SQL Server on your machines, we use Source Control and its
database which is hosted by Ilumnis in ASP mode. Everything you need
is a browser and you are ready to use it.
· Proactive. Believe or not, if you have a subscription, a tool will
notify you about changes via email. So, there is no guessing what a
developer needs to download for his current build. It is possible to
subscribe for files and folders in the project. It is even possible to
collect email notifications in daily or weekly batches so the system
is not annoying at all. Proactive, but not annoying.
· Publishing. You can use this as a publishing system, instead of
some expensive specialized software. The system is able to copy files
to the appropriate URL via ftp.
· Remote Build. The software is able to automate and run nightly
builds. This is easiest to set up with .Net but, as long as you can
write a build script, it can do it for almost anything. Just configure
the application for automatic build and get e-mail notification with
build results.
· Issue tracking. One has to be impressed with the tool that
encompasses so much of needed functionality and almost nothing you
won't use. The system is able to track project issues and it is tied
into Source control itself. So when you are checking out the file you
also respond on the appropriate issue. Great!
With this system you can have as many developers as you want and never
worry about versions they work on. Project leaders and managers now
can work on the same project despite of their distance or time zone.
Yes, I have to mention this simple, but very useful feature, time
zones are covered so you can see exactly when the file was modified,
added or deleted in your or developers local time. It's very important
to emphasize that Source Control keeps history of all changes and it
is easy to compare two version of the same file.
Give it a try, you will not regret it.
