When a team of programmers are working together on a project, it's often important to maintain the organization from the beginning of the project to the end. Source control offers us the ability to save the pieces of the project as we go along. Subversion is a source control which keeps track of the progress and changes made to the code, as well as an updated copy of the project. These tools are extremely helpful to use to keep the creation of the project organized and accessible to the entire team.
Source control can keep track of the changes that the team makes to the code. If a new feature is added into the code and the programmer wishes to remove it from the code, they can look back at the code before the changes were made and remove the applied changes. Another example where source control is important is when errors occur. If the program was working fine and was updated using the source control, they can always go back to that saved code if they ruined their program without knowing what was wrong.
Subversion is a kind of source control where it keeps an updated copy for everyone to access. The programmers also can change the program and commit their changes to the updated copy. This is useful, because the team can break down the workload and assign different members tasks to work on. As long as they are not working on the same part of the program, there shouldn't be any problem. In some cases where it does happen, subversion has the ability to notify the conflicting members of their lines of code that they both changed so they can figure out whose code to use. This means that their work can be merged together, which saves a lot of time when creating a large project.
I think that using source control is very important, because I can look back at the progress I made starting from the beginning and continuing as I go along. If I need to remove the changes that I made to the program, I can always revert to an earlier copy of the code that I had. Subversion is very useful, because it has the properties of source control and additional tools that help me resolve conflicts when coding with my lab partner. If we both changed the same line of code, it will notify the second person so that we do not overwrite the updated version with the wrong code if the coding was already correct.
I agree that svn's ability to handle conflicts is one of its most important features. The ability to checkout files to a local workspace is important too. It has saved my partner and I on more than one occasion when something gets accidentally deleted, corrupted, copied wrong, etc.
Killain Pukema
Source control did a good job of keeping track of the changes made to our project. We can have the entire developing process completely recorded under the reversions. So we will not be afraid to mess and test with the code in trunk directory. I also agree that resolving conflict is another one important feature. The team work needs a such a convenient way to solve conflicts instead of hold a meet to see who made what changes.
-Han Lu
I agree that one of the useful features of SVN is that it will detect a conflict when two developers change the same line of code. However, it won't necessarily notify both users of the conflict. The first user to check in their code gets their code committed to the repository. SVN then refuses to let the second user check in his or her conflicting code. It is usually up to the second user to contact the first user to determine how to merge the code together.
-Kevin Mehlhaff
SVN is very useful in this class and I imagine can be used in the real world to help keep source files organized and safe. My partner and I have come across errors before and had to resort to using revert, it was a life saver that saved a lot of time. I feel a lot more confident when using SVN just because I no longer have to create multiple copies of one file to write new code and test, like I used to do in 1902.
- Keng Kue Lor