{"id":117,"date":"2012-03-11T22:44:17","date_gmt":"2012-03-11T22:44:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/boulderinformationservices.wordpress.com\/?p=117"},"modified":"2012-03-11T22:44:17","modified_gmt":"2012-03-11T22:44:17","slug":"use-repositories-to-protect-your-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/boulderinformationservices.com\/blog\/use-repositories-to-protect-your-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Use repositories to protect your work"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Software developers use repositories to protect their work. If you work with many text files, you should too.<\/p>\n

Repositories are snapshots of your work, stored on a timeline. You can use a repository for any collection of text files. My work happens to be web programming, but you could set up a repository to track legal documents, book chapters, or spreadsheets. (Note: you can also store binary files such as photos, music, or videos in a repository, but you don’t get the benefits of merging discrete changes (see below).)<\/p>\n

Repositories protect your work and give access to its history of changes. Repositories allow you to boldly forge ahead with changes because you can always get back to a stable point in history if you need to.<\/p>\n

Working in branches<\/h2>\n

When using a repository, the best practice is to create a new branch (a new snapshot of your work) any time you have more than just a few minutes’ work to do. (If you are working on a “branch,” then the “trunk” is that snapshot you took before you started making changes.)<\/p>\n

As you complete tasks, or when you break for lunch or at the end of the day, you check in new snapshots. You keep working until you reach a stable point where you’re ready to share your work with others. Once your current task is complete, you merge your branch back into the trunk.<\/p>\n

The neat thing about working in a branch is that, if at any time your colleagues need to see a good, clean copy of your work, you can give them a snapshot of the trunk, and it won’t have all the half-finished work that you have been saving in your branch.<\/p>\n

A new dimension<\/h2>\n

If a repository were only a string of snapshots, it would be very low-tech. You could create your own “repository” just by storing copies of your work in folders marked with the date. It’s a one-dimensional timeline of your work.<\/p>\n

What makes repository software like Subversion or Git so high-tech is that they know how to detect just the differences<\/em> between one version and the next, which makes it possible to merge<\/em> changes. Subversion and Git therefore allow you to work simultaneously with any number of colleagues.<\/p>\n

Repositories are two-dimensional, allowing any number of parallel timelines, one for each colleague on your team.<\/p>\n

Collaborating using a repository<\/h2>\n

Here’s how.<\/p>\n

In the beginning, there was the trunk. “The beginning” is the day you decide to adopt a repository. The trunk is the baseline from which all work will flow and back into which all worthy work will return.<\/p>\n

As each member of the team is assigned a task, he or she creates their own branch, starting from the trunk. Any number of people can be working on an individual branch, and still, there is a stable trunk for use by clients, colleagues, and bosses.<\/p>\n

When you finish your work and it is ready to share, you merge<\/em> your changes into the trunk. And because repository software knows about changes and merging, each of your colleagues can\u00a0 perform the same merge<\/em> of your<\/em> changes into their<\/em> work.<\/p>\n

Occasionally, you will have changed the same exact line in the same exact file in a way that conflicts with one of your colleagues’ work. But repositories will show you these conflicts and ask you to resolve them the old-fashioned way…<\/p>\n

… by talking to your colleagues and settling on the solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Software developers use repositories to protect their work. If you work with many text files, you should too. Repositories are snapshots of your work, stored on a timeline. You can use a repository for any collection of text files. My … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,13,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boulderinformationservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boulderinformationservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boulderinformationservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boulderinformationservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boulderinformationservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/boulderinformationservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boulderinformationservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boulderinformationservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boulderinformationservices.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}