Roy Tang

Programmer, engineer, scientist, critic, gamer, dreamer, and kid-at-heart.

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Not really a programming question per se, so pls advice if I should move it to some other stackexchange…

Is there a recommended Version Control solution running on a local (Windows XP/Vista/7) machine for the use of a single person only? I may not have internet access on the box so online repos like Github or Mercurial are out of the question.

Thanks!

Comments

You can install Subversion locally if you really want a server based solution. If you’re running 100% local on a single machine then Hg and Git will work just fine. You don’t need to pair them with a service like GitHub or Bitbucket.

The Mercurial QuickStart (section 3) covers how to set up Mercurial locally.

For Windows I’d recommend VisualSVN as a way to quickly get a SVN server on your machine.

Git and Mercurial can both be used locally. I use SVN with TortoiseSVN, which works fine for a single developer; I’ve also got some stuff in Mercurial, because I’m experimenting with it as well.

You can install Subversion (i.e SVN) client and server on your own machine and start using them.

Svnadmin for managing svn server is also easy to use, And there are plenty of binary distributions for subversion on windows (both server and client)

That is what I suggest as it helps you learn SVN and use it anywhere else.

Mercurial can work well on a local environment. There is no “central server” for a Hg repository, so you can just create one in your project folder, and commit as and when you like. It also integrates very well into Windows Explorer and (if you use it) Visual Studio using TortoiseHg and VisualHg respectively.

You can even implement push/pull functionality in your repositories locally, by storing your repository in a different folder.

Edit - I have used Mercurial locally, and I’ve also used it by storing my central repositories on an external hard drive. It works identically over a network and between folders (or hard drives) on your local PC.