I tried TRAC before and knew how powerful it is
But I'm having lots of difficulties to to put it on an online host, it needs lots of resources and can't put it on a regular paid host
So I wanted to know if there is a TRAC-Like but written with PHP or something, I need it to have SVN, Wiki, Ticket issuing and maybe Forums
Redmine (RoR)
Retrospectiva (RoR)
jotBug (PHP + Zend)
FusionForge (PHP)
If you have Ruby on Rails support, you might take a look at Redmine. It has all of the features that you require. I've recently started using it and have been pretty happy with it. I was never able to find one written in PHP that suited my needs.
Maybe InDefero? It's written in PHP and tries to be a clone of Google code. It has support for git, svn and Mercurial.
I would recommend InDefero too. Clean and fast.
I used to have same issue, but I badly wanted Trac and nothing else. I finally rented a small Windows-based virtual server at €20/month (the linux ones are cheaper) on which I do all my development stuff: Subversion, a test Apache environment, and Trac. It takes some time to set up, but I'm quite happy with it and can recommend it. Also, on standard shared hosting, your problems might not end with Trac: Subversion is a rarity among hosting providers as well. Depending on where you are based, e.g. 1and1 rent cheap virtual servers in europe and the US.
Related
I've spent some time now developing a web application in php. It has mostly been just for the fun of learning as a side project, but the app now has a few users which I don't want to upset by breaking things as I develop.
At the moment, I have a very rudimentary method for managing the development - I use a text editor (ultraedit) to write the code and use its built in ftp to upload the files to the server. In terms of version control I have 2 domains, and only push files to the "live" domain when they work, but that's it. The domains are hosted on a cPanel shared hosting site which I have some doubts about its ability to handle even minor spikes in traffic. I looked at slicehost yesterday for something more scalable but that looks like a bit of a learning curve from where I am now.
I know I could do better than this, but where to start? I think I need advice on three things
1 - code writing tool
2 - version control / management
3 - scalable hosting
I've deliberately asked these in the same question as I'd like to know if one choice impacts another. Is there a good integrated solution?
Thanks in advance as ever.
Each part of your question has been answered before. The list below lists some of the common tools to use and links to appropriate searches on StackOverflow. There is no all in one package and going into details about these tools in one question is out of scope, so I am afraid you have to do some digging:
SVN, Git or Mercurial
UnitTesting (PHPUnit or SimpleTest)
Continuous Integration
Phing (for deployment)
phpqatools.org
Netbeans or Eclipse (for an IDE)
Disclaimer: list is not meant to be complete and order is not important
There is a lot going on here. I'll give you my two cents though.
I used to use ultra edit. Now I use netbeans, its a fully integrated development environment and it makes my life soooo much easier. Its free too. I can't imagine ever going back to UltraEdit. Also, which brings me to number two, netbeans has SVN and CVS integration
I would use subversion for version control. In my experience it does everything you need for version control. Others use ones like git and mercurial, but I think SVN is widely supported and easy enough to set up. As far as pushing code to the server, i've begun using svn for this too. I first ssh into the server and checkout the code into the public_html directory, and then set up an alias to do svn updates through the command line... its way easier than ftping in my opinion. There are other deployment methods, but i've never used them. see this question:
What is your preferred php deployment strategy?
obviously shared hosting is not going to handle traffic as well as a dedicated server. But there are lots of things you can do to improve performance before moving to a dedicated server. Check out this article: http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html
It seems that you're after a robust deployment strategy as opposed to a development one. But, correct me if I'm wrong.
In terms of 'code writing tool', and
IDE choice is a subjective
discussion. Feel free to work with
the one you are most comfortable
with, for me this is Netbeans.
As for a deployment strategy, I think it was best summed up in this answer.
Your point about scalable hosting is fairly broad. We will need much better forcasted metrics to give better advice. However, for now, if scalable hosting is a worry then maybe look into some sort of Cloud Hosting.
Have you looked at using wamp/xamp/mamp/lamp for development locally? Uploading via ftp for every change is a pain.
You could do that for local and see that everything works, then push it to your test domain and run through it again and then finally push live.
Might want to look at something like SpringLoops for doing your version control - this has the advantage of doing the deploy and then if it goes pear shaped you can revert it (free account gets 3 deploys a day).
I wouldn't worry about scaleable hosting just now, just focus on the site and the coding, you've only got a few users - wait till it starts becoming a problem before moving (however, I suggest looking into options) but don't try and get all cloud ready - might not ever be a problem.
ps, go with Linode over Slicehost.
I think use Aptana Studio ( http://www.aptana.org ). It is an Eclipse based IDE with all the tools you need integrated in it. It has integrated PHP development tools, GIT or SVN for version control.
I've used shared hosting as well. Once an other site on the same server had DoS atacks and my site became unreachable as well. Otherwise it could work in reasonable speed after some optimization. It served 1000-3000 users per day.
Dedicated servers are much better. Or you can use Amazon web services. I know they are more expensive.
1 - code writing tool
Zend Studio. I would recommend Linux as well if you are going to use linux servers.
2 - version control / management
SVN + phing (if you are going to build serious applications).
3 - scalable hosting
Amazon or RackSpace.
For your editor, just use what you are comfortable and productive with. You most definitely should have version control in place. You never know when you need to rollback a version or two.
I always keep at least 3 versions on the production server. I use symlinks to point the web server at the latest version. If there is a problem, you just need to recreate the symlink to point to an older version.
As for shared hosting, you'd be surprised out how much bandwidth you can get. I have a $10/month shared host that gets about 500K page views a month. Generally, it's not that your shared host can't handle the load, it's that the hosting provider puts too many "shares" on the same server. So it depends on how much resources everyone else on the same server is using. If you are having issues, you can always ask to be moved to a different server.
We are just beginning the process of looking for a source code control system. I realize we are behind, but better late than never. None of the members on our team have experience with any systems in their past so I was hoping I could find out some basic things to look for as we begin investigating different tools. Here is a little background on our team:
Our group consists of developers and designers
We work primarily on PC's with one or two on Mac's
Many are not comfortable with command line based systems
The majority of our development is for the web
We develop in ASP.NET, ColdFusion, and PHP
A few we plan on looking into:
SourceGear Vault
Concurrent Versions System
Subversion
Microsoft Visual SourceSafe
PVCS
Rational ClearCase
Team Foundation Server
Git
Tourtoise SVN
Bazaar
Any experiences with any of these would be helpful to hear about.
Do not use Source Safe! It's not only bad for source control it's just bad for the world.
I use Subversion with Tortoise. I love it. Rather easy to get up and running. Branching/Merging can still be a nightmare though.
Visual SVN is good too.
If you havent had a single sourcecontrolsystem so far, I rather doubt you can see the improvements of GIT etc.
Start simple and with a lot of support: use Subversion as Server and Tortoise as Client.
Its a easy setup and easy to use.
Subversion is especially suitable for web development because of the 'differencing' algorithm it uses for binary files. Web development isn't just about code. Binary resources come into play a lot (images, PDFs, etc).
Subversion tracks the differences between files and records those. Contrast that with CVS, which essentially stores another copy of the binary file, and the benefit becomes apparent as your binary resources and check-ins increase.
I use the TortoiseSVN plug-in, which is decent enough for me. As you specifically tag asp .net, you might want to look into VisualSVN, which does a great job in mitigating the biggest problem in version control - a colleague forgetting to add a file to the repository.
I also used Visual Sourcesafe back in the day. Don't know if it's still the same now, but its exclusive checkout per user was a complete nightmare in a team of multiple devs. Constantly had to remind people to check stuff back in or, alternatively, convince a friendly admin to log me in under their credentials whenever someone was out of office.
You may want to take a look at Perforce.
http://www.perforce.com/perforce/products.html
You should go with subversion, or maybe git or mercurial.
It's clearly not worth it for you to buy anything, I think you can remove commercial solutions from your list right away.
Also, you should probably get some 3rd party hosting instead of running your own server.
I work at a client where they use TortoiseSVN as the client and installed VisualSVN (Subversion) as the server component. At one point we had this master plan to use nANT and CruiseControl to keep 3 different environments for a .NET website in sync, but we haven't gotten approval on that yet (shock). So until then, we use our Subversion server to hold all the source code and keep the different environments in sync manually. Its not the best scenario in the world but it gives everyone access to the code and our development group is small enough that its easy enough for everyone to know what is being worked on.
Subversion as a server, and tortoise svn as a client, could fit very well for your requirements, althought I hear that GIT is newer and has a lot of improvement.
I'd second using Tortoise SVN, avoiding SourceSafe and add another to the list:
Perforce - This what was used at one of my former workplaces. It wasn't bad though the merges were painful to do in that it took 1-2 developers a day to get the code merged to move from one environment to other,e.g. dev->test, test->staging.
Tortoise SVN has a lot of built-in windows explorer options that can be used instead of the command line so I rarely use the command line with Subversion.
If you do go with SourceSafe do beware that there is an admin tool to analyze the DB to see that should be run periodically and can be a little annoying as I don't think anyone is supposed to be using SS when the analyser is running. The branching in VSS is kind of weak, especially in contrast to seeing how well things work in SVN.
Another point is to consider if you have a bug-tracking system and want to have an integration between the two.
i personally use git with cygwin. i prefer it over svn because of the pain that svn has caused me in the past with merges. git was designed with making merges painless and it does a very effective job at adhering to that.
if cygwin isn't your cup of tea and you need to have windows explorer integration, please check out the ToroiseGit project. It has the look and feel of ToroiseSVN so it's easy to pickup. you can even run ToroitseGit and TortoiseSVN side by side if you desire.
also TortoiseGit has built in support for SVN repos so you can check out an svn repo and get all the benefits of local branches and what have you.
It true that VSS should not be considered - it is a dead product and just plain bad. However, Team Foundation Server - especially 2010 should be given a look. It not only does source code control but it has a work item tracking system, CI and build server and has some really great tools for testing. For example, it will run automated scripts and record the session in an mpeg movie so that you can actually see what the screen looked like when/if the test failed.
If that's more than what you want, go with SVN.
First advice: Don't use SourceSafe. It's a nightmare. I think even Microsoft developers don't use it internally!
You could go with SVN using TortoiseSVN as a front-end for the people not comfortable with the command line. But you will have to host your own Subversion server or to find an hosting provider for your repositories.
Also, there is SVN plugins for the most used IDE out there.
Another +1 to Subversion. Have used with a variety of languages, including ColdFusion. Tortoise is great for windows, the best graphical clients for Mac are not free, however.
Would also recommend against Rational Clearcase. Their client is kludgy and there aren't near as many plugins for different ide/platforms.
I'm currently working with Rational ClearCase and I cannot complain (at least, 'till now).
Before that we used ChangeMan Dimensions, that's a regular CVS tool with many resources but in my opinion, it makes source control become very burocratic, to say the least: it features the infamous exclusive checkout. I also don't like the design.
ClearCase has a Windows-Explorer look and once you get used to it, it becomes very simple to use. It also has a nice and easy integration with MS Visual Studio.
SourceGear Vault is a great tool. Its interface is similar to VSS, but it doesn't have all the problems.
If you use .net and visual studio or are in a heavily MS environment you may really like TFS. It has very good integration with Visual Studio. It also has lots of other functions like tracking tasks, bugs, etc. and automating builds. It is expensive, especially in the world of SCMs where you can get a lot for free (svn, git). Since you mentioned .net though it may be worth a look.
You need to make a decision as to whether you want to pay for it or have one for free. I know SVN and CVS are free and there are great UI clients and IDE plugins also available for free.
We started off with CVS and then transitioned to SVN a few years ago. The advantages we had were that a. SVN repo was smaller, b. It was accessible over the net through both http and https, c. Had great client UI tools (i use SmartSVN), there are also great plugins for eclipse and intelliJ. d. transitioning from using CVS to SVN was very easy as a user.
I've used QVCS by link text they have fair and much cheaper prices, for different versions.
I've used and tried subversion, and I personally do not like it, but if people like it and use, that's awesome for them.
I say you should find one that has the features you need, and price range that is reasonable, and has a good support system..
The hard part is getting everyone on your team to use it, and use it wisely...
Personally, I really like Subversion and the tortoiseSvn client as many have already noted. One site I found that I really like is http://www.springloops.com. They offer cheap SVN hosting, but they also integrate with BaseCamp which I love for managing projects. If you like Basecamp and also use Svn, its worth a look
Git with GitHub for Windows and/or TortoiseGit.
I have a web server which can run PHP and Ruby.
I would like to know if there is a PHP program which can do version control of my code similar to SVN?
I know there are already open source project hosting sites which provide this service already but I would like it to be installed on my own host.
I don't have the access to this server to install additional packages either
I'm not aware of any version-control system written in PHP. But even if there were one, I'd stay away from it. Version control isn't one of the things a scripting language is best used for.
Edit: I suggest installing Subversion on your local machine and develop all the code there, that way the SVN on your local computer can be used for version-control.
Edit 2: If you are collaborating with others and want them to have access to your repositry, I suggest getting subversion hosting somewhere for your project. There are some free hosts out there that support it, just google it and you should find some results.
For the same reasons - want to store the data on my own web site, which only supports PHP - I've created phpEasyVCS. It offers a web interface and WebDAV access.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/asvcs/ - Haven't tried this. But this sounds like what you are after.
For what I know WEBSVN is just a way to view your SVN repository
Regards
Why on earth would you care about the language of a tool that you use? That's like complaining that the builder of your house used a wooden ladder instead of a metal one.
Use Subversion or Git or anything you want, they'll all work fine.
Just use an online service such as http://unfuddle.com/ or http://cvsdude.com/
They have free basic plans and even their paid plans are cheap enough to make it worth it.
If you need VCS somewhere that is not your computer and the production site is not under your control either, I would agree with nandos that you should use online service.
Then in order to put changes in production you could make PHP script on production site that accesses the online service and downloads the newest version via HTTP (http should be generally available with CVS, and SVN uses it natively) rather than using specific VCS protocols.
You will have limited options, but that's not what generally is expected to be controlled from production anyway.
Ok I think nobody has really answered to my question.
I said that I don't want any hosting facilities like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_free_software_hosting_facilities.
So I think I will use http://websvn.tigris.org/
Thanks.
Guillaume
Why must the VCS be written in PHP? You could use SVN as the VCS and serve the files using apache. I can't think of a single benefit of wrestling with yet another version control system. What you could do is get a virtual machine appliance for source code control and issue management like vmTrac and either run it directly or pick it apart and figure out how it was put together
I know this is old, but for reference, since you have FTP access, you could use Bazaar over FTP, and use something like Redmine as a webviewer. Using FTP would be slower than installing the Bazaar smart server on the server (FTP is known as a "dumb" transport), but it would meet all your requirements.
Hope that helps someone
-Scott
My hosting service does not currently run/allow svn, git, cvs on their server. I would really like to be able to 'sync' my current source on my development machine with my production server.
I am looking for a pure php/python/ruby version control system (not just a client for a version control system) that does not require any services running on the server machine, something that could use the http interface to upload/download and sync files - basically offering a back end into my 'live' site for version control.
Additionally, I would think that such a system would be easy to develop an 'online' ide for, so that I could develop directly on the production server. (issues of testing aside of course)
Does anyone know if such a system exists?
==Edit==
Really, I want a wiki front end for a version control / development system - Basically look like a wiki and edit development files so that I could easily make and roll back changes via the web. I doubt this exists, but it would be easy to extend an existing php port of svn...
Get a better hosting service. Seriously. Even if you found something that worked in PHP/Ruby/Perl/Whatever, it would still be a sub-par solution. It most likely wouldn't integrate with any IDE you have, and wouldn't have a good tool set available for working with it. It would be really clunky to do correctly.
The other option is to get a free SVN host, or host SVN on your own machine, and then just push updates from your SVN host to your web site via ftp.
Don't host your repository on your web server. Deploy from your server to the ftp/sftp - whatever.
You could look into mercurial or bazaar-ng they are both written in python and support at least http downloads afaik, not really web based but written in one of the languages your hoster supports if the tags are correct. HTH
Mercurial has a web-interface and allows commits via http. It uses a couple of C extensions, but I would guess that all of them have pure-Python counterparts.
You can also just use WebDAV, when your hoster provides it.
I think it's actually a pretty good idea, but don't believe such a versioning system exists (yet) so hopefully you'll go ahead and make one.
I don't think adapting an existing solution is going to be easy, but it's probably worth looking into because if you use an existing solution you'll have all the client support done, and most of the versioning difficulties taken care of.
Starting from scratch is not going to be trivial.
-Adam
Use Bazaar:
Lightweight. No dedicated server with Bazaar installed is needed, just FTP access to a web server. A smart server is available for those requiring additional performance or security but it is not required in many cases - Bazaar 1.x over plain http performs well.
you could try the reverse way
use e.g. a free online svn/git Service to version control the sources on your dev machine
use usual ways to update the "production" machine aka site, like FTP
Why dont you want a client..? A simple client that you can run on your production machine which then syncs to your repository running on another server somewhere.
SVN is available over HTTP so writing a client that is able to sync your code is really easy in python or php.
I've been contacted to see about updating an old legacy web application that was built using ASP and Access. The server is running Windows 2000 Advanced Server and I believe IIS 5.0 (I am trying to get confirmation on that, but the company isn't technical so I highly doubt Apache is running on the server).
What languages would be viable for updating this web app on the above platform? I've never touched classic ASP much less done any web development work against Windows 2000/IIS 5. There are no plans on updating the server to anything new due to budget concerns.
I'm leaning at the moment to moving to an SQLite-based database (customer isn't too keen on installing MySQL at the moment but I'm still in planning stages and this is a relatively low-traffic website) but what language would I pair with that? Does ASP.NET work well under IIS 5? Does PHP perform worth anything under this kind of setup?
I have a similar situation, did it about a year ago, and ended up using asp.net 2.0.
Generally ok, but the machine is showing it's age, I usually need to get someone to give it the 3 fingered salute every month or so, and it blew a psu recently.
If it's only low volume, you might be able to install sql express, which will make your life a lot easier than something like SQLlite, as dotnet plays nicest with other MS stuff, and there is a lot of labour saving goodness built in.
You would also be able to use the access to sql migration tools if you use sql express.
Would also suggest that you look at something like subsonic or nhibernate, which will take care of a lot of the boring and error prone stuff for you.
It really depends on where your experience lies, and how big the project is, if you've never used dotnet before, then start on something small, this may or may not be the one.
Apparently php performs well on win 2008, but as for 2000, never tried. Did have apache on a 2k box many years ago, but wasn't using php.
If the company is concerned with cost, I would be very conservative making changes. Concentrate on why they want to update- do they want to add new functionality? What are their mid-to-long term plans for the site? Are they having trouble maintaining the site? Going to a custom .NET solution may only complicate things further unless they are willing to make some ongoing investment in development.
If it's a relatively simple site, they may want to consider a platform like DotNetNuke. There are hosts out there that sell ready-to-configure sites that can do quite a lot with a minimum of configuration. That combined with a profressionally developed DotNetNuke UI template (TemplateMonster.com offers them) may be a good solution.
If they do want to go with a custom solution, ASP.NET runs fine on IIS 5.0. I believe you can run the .NET Framework up to at least 2.0, not sure about 3.0 or 3.5. Language won't make a difference to functionality, so C# or VB.NET are fine, all things being equal.
In this scenario, I would probably go with ASP.NET. Since you're running on a microsoft server, there will be plenty of documentation from MS on installing, configuring, and running the site. It's a lot easier to support something when all the components are "in the same family" so to speak. Asp.net will run fine under IIS 5. It doesn't have a lot of the security and scalability upgrades that IIS 6 does, but it will do the trick.
I was able to get a bit more information. The box is running IIS 5.0 and the IT guy handling it is more than happy to let me install whatever I need. From googling and responses below it seems like my best bet will be to convert the site to ASP.NET 2.0 with SQL Server Express 2005 running as the DB.