Amazingly, I’m finding that not too many Flash developers have embraced version control as common practice during (Flash) production. Some people rely on naming conventions which may result in file names such as “finalReallyFinal3_final5_IT3.fla”. Even though most developers topically understand version control and know they should use it, for one reason or another they have avoided implementing it in their daily work. For me it was the frustration with finding a cost effective solution that would allow me to not only version tiny .as files, but would allow me to add big FLAs, while not bloating the storage requirements with every update (many version control servers have limits that are only a few hundred megabytes).
Whether you are a freelancer working from home, or manage a large agency with multiple flash developers, you should really consider adopting this practice, disciplining yourself (as well as your team) to implement it on every project. Once you’ve completed a few, you’ll find that versioning your projects is invaluable.
In this article I cover the basics and provide a step by step guide on how to get things up and running quickly. I touch on common questions, problems, best practices, and things to watch out for, as well as two deployment scenarios: a large organization such as an interactive agency and a smaller (individual) scale deployment for freelancers.
Before I dive into the details, I’d like to mention that Peter Elst’s presentation on AS 2.0 Best Practices prompted me to release this guide, which is based on our (BLITZ’s) internal version control setup, handling 20-40 concurrent jobs with a team of 50 (some remote over VPN) and storage requirements of 500GB. Please note that I don’t recommend you throw all projects assets into a version control repository. Things like gigabytes of client assets or large uncompressed video should not be added into the repository. I highly suggest you also read the Guidelines for Project Directory Structure and Naming Conventions.
While this article references a Windows deployment, the software supports most popular OSs. I recommend you read it from start to finish first and then go back to follow the steps.
Let’s begin. Download the step by step how to guide here:
PDF: BLITZ_VersionControlWithSubVersion.pdf
Word: BLITZ_VersionControlWithSubVersion.doc
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Dear Mr Todorov, Blitz crew,
I downloaded the tutorial and as I was reading it, I suddenly ‘remembered’ that doing stuff like this takes a serious amount of your time. And we all know, we actually never have time.
‘If you want time, buy the magazine!’…
So I just wanna thank you for doing this and even more for sharing it with the rest of us.
Thanks and take care
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