Happy sandboxes and svn switch
http://bojordan.com/log/?p=574
I encourage everyone I work with to keep all of their development code in a source repository, even one-off dead-end prototype code they’re not going to check back into a main development tree. If you know you’re going to do destabilizing work, of course you’ll create a sandbox branch from the development branch and then do your work; we all know this. So, what happens if you inadvertently end up with a dead-end prototype in your working source checkout, and you didn’t have the foresight to start with a branch? It’s easy to make it as if you had.
Disclaimer: Of course, if this all fails you could lose a lot of work, so you might want to generate a quick diff or backup just in case. Just be careful.
Just remember: No more stale development tree archives on your development machines means cleaner, uncluttered living, and might get you one step closer to a 16 minute 5k. Or, maybe not, but you’ll still be happier.
I encourage everyone I work with to keep all of their development code in a source repository, even one-off dead-end prototype code they’re not going to check back into a main development tree. If you know you’re going to do destabilizing work, of course you’ll create a sandbox branch from the development branch and then do your work; we all know this. So, what happens if you inadvertently end up with a dead-end prototype in your working source checkout, and you didn’t have the foresight to start with a branch? It’s easy to make it as if you had.
Disclaimer: Of course, if this all fails you could lose a lot of work, so you might want to generate a quick diff or backup just in case. Just be careful.
- Create a development branch in our repository on the server. We are using Windows and TortoiseSVN, and our working code is from the branch at svn://svnserver/MyProject/Trunk at revision 1942. So, we use the Repo-browser in TortoiseSVN to find Trunk, select revision 1942 from the upper right-hand corner of the dialog, and then select “Copy to…” with a new location at svn://svnserver/MyProject/Sandboxes/bojordan/DeadEndPrototype. We now have a new branch, but our working code still belongs to Trunk.
- Right-click on my top-level checkout directory, select “Switch” from the TortoiseSVN options, and select the new branch in the “To URL:”. We know HEAD is fine, as we just created the new branch.
- Now, the next time we commit our code, we’ll check it back into the new branch. Glee!
Just remember: No more stale development tree archives on your development machines means cleaner, uncluttered living, and might get you one step closer to a 16 minute 5k. Or, maybe not, but you’ll still be happier.