Monthly Archives: March 2011

Decentralized File Version Control

I’ve been using Subversion for years to store all of my files. It works well for binary and text files and Subversion is capable of file locking which is an important feature for binary CAD files. I know that lots of people tell you no put binary files in version control software, but it does work if you use the right system. Right now there’s 10’s of gigabytes in my work repository with a working copy that’s about 2GB and there hasn’t been any problems so far. The advantages of using Subversion are:

  • Data security: All your data is in Subversion which means it’s easy to go back in time if necessary. If you setup a separate server you also get redundancy as well since now there’s multiple copies of the data.
  • File locking: This is important for organizations where multiple people work on the same files. By enforcing file locking rules, Subversion makes sure that only 1 person can edit a file at a time. Nothing is more frustrating than having your changes overwritten by someone else.
  • Remote file access: You can easily access Subversion over HTTPS or SSH.

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