I have never used a full blown version control system before.
However, everybody around me keeps waxing about the benefits
and I can see the point too.

The thing is, the way I work is that I tend to just "go commando" in
the sense of starting a project on a web server (in a hidden or
unpublished directory) and work on things there.
I've never really build a project on my local desktop or laptop
with XAMP or MAMP.
Maybe I'm crazy. I dunno. I just don't like the idea of
second guessing if something is gonna break when I
migrate it from my desk to a server.

To cut a long explanation short, I like building things directly on a web server but I want to start using PHP file versioning systems.

Based on that criteria, which is better suited for me:
GIT or SVN

(I believe CVS is a dead end now, at least for Drupal, so
I am not interested in that option).


Thank you.

I don't use version control unless I have to or I'm working with other people. If all you are doing is managing your site you may be better off setting up a testing server on your local machine and pushing updates to the production server when needed. The real advantage of using a version control system is it allows multiple people to work on the same code without stepping on each other's toes (as much).

When I do use version control it's always SVN, more out of necessity than choice.

Originally Posted by NullPointer

If all you are doing is managing your site you may be better off setting up a testing server on your local machine and pushing updates to the production server when needed.

Thats kind of what I do now. Although I use a dedicated development space on a shared hosting account.

So Nullpointer, would SVN still suit that kind of work flow?
I guess from a "sole developer" point of view, I am looking at
versioning as way of creating "roll back" points if something goes
wrong with code changes.

I've never used version control either. Tried it a few times but always got hacked off very quickly when I have to make yet another copy because I spotted a spelling error and corrected it.

I can see where it would have benefits for a group project, but when flying solo it just gets in the way.

I simply have myself organised to make a copy of the module or file I am working on, or when working with functions or classes I copy and paste the code block I am working and add a date & time to the function name so it no longer operates, should what I change fail to behave as expected, ... nothing lost but a small amount of time.

As, for a long time, I have never written code in monolithic "page sized" blocks as is the way that many webdevelopers seem to work where they have a page for a form, then another page to collect the data which I always found that a very stilted way to look at things, this approach suits the way that I work.

For my day job I work in a team of 4 developers so versioning is a much. Not just for the rollback but the merging of files that maybe two or three of us are working on at the same time. This happens often on an agile team. The size of a project doesn't matter. We do it for small sites and big ones. Except for big ones there's much more than just the versioning control.

We use git here and I love git. It was not hard to pickup the basic stuff and it gets really powerful.

I manage a couple large personal sites and all I do is work local and FTP up. It is a lot easier. The rollback is that I backup sites regularly and if I mess up a file I just redownload it from the server. I don't push it out until it works locally.

Oh another reason you may want to use versioning if you're working by yourself is if you're like me, working from multiple machines. I like to work on a desktop at home but I have a choice of laptops when I go out.