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Before starting work on our first app I decided to do some research on version control.  To cut a long story short, I’ve settled on Mercurial and a private repository hosted by Bitbucket.

You need* to work with RB’s VCP file format. This simply stores each object as it’s own separate file. The file structure I’ve adopted for our new project is as follows:

The reason for the External Items folder is that when RB saves in the VCP format, it doesn’t save the external items in the same folder (in our example, Code).  Since we’re going to get Mercurial to track the MyApp folder, it makes sense to put all the relevant external items within it.

We only use Macs here at Figa  and we’ve settled on MacHg (free, lovely looking) as a frontend GUI for Mercurial.  I hate dealing with the Terminal. If you’re on Windows then I’m sure there is an equivalent (or you could use the command line).  The following steps are how to get up and running with this application but the principles will be similar:

1. Install MacHg (it contains all the backend stuff necessary).
2. It’ll prompt you for a user name in the format Display Name <email@address>. Every time you commit to the repository, this will be the default user who made the change (it can be changed on a per-commit basis later).
3. Drag the MyApp folder into the left hand repository source list or click the ‘Create Repository’ button
4. If you click on MyApp in the source list it will reveal it’s contents for you on the right hand side
5. You need to tell Mercurial which files to track. This is easy. Just press opt-cmd-A and that will set every file in the repository to be tracked. Whenever you add a new file you’ll need to do this.  No biggy.
6. At the moment, Mercurial is tracking these files but nothing has been committed to the repository. Once a file has been committed then you have the option of rolling back to it or comparing it with newer or older versions. To commit everything, use the shortcut opt-cmd-S (or you can commit only selected files with the shortcut shift-cmd-S).
7. When you commit, the commit window appears. In this window you can add a commit message (compulsory and highly recommended – use it to remind yourself what you just changed). You’ll notice that your username is already populated for you but you could change this if you like.

For local repositories, that’s the short of it. Whenever you make a change to any file being tracked, MacHg will show a little icon to the left of that file telling you it’s been added, removed or modified. You can click on a file anywhere in your project’s timeline and diff it (i.e. look to see code-level changes between the two files).  If, like us, you’d like to store the repository off-site so it can be easily accessed by other members of your team then read on.

The beauty of Mercurial is that every copy of the repository is the complete repository.  This means that the working copy I have on my Mac has all the files necessary to build the app, just as the online repository does.  What we’ve settled on is using Bitbucket to host our repository.  They have several packages available.  If you need less than 200 MB storage and five or less contributors (i.e. developers) then it won’t cost you a penny.  The more storage and the more contributors you require, the more you pay per month.  Repositories stored on Bitbucket can be private (the default, i.e. only visible to you and contributors you’ve invited) or public (i.e. used for open source development).

Using MacHg with Bitbucket is pretty easy really:

1. Create a new repository over at Bitbucket.  Note down the URL for the repository.
2. Add a new remote repository in MacHg and point it to the above URL (you’ll need to enter your Bitbucket username and password if it’s a private repository)
3. At this stage, you have an empty, virgin, repository.
4. Select this remote repository in the left-hand sidebar and click on the ‘Pull’ button on the toolbar.  MacHg will ask you for a location to store the local copy of this repository
5. Do some coding and save to this local repository,  committing changes when you like just as you would in the earlier steps above
6. Push changes and commits you’ve made locally to Bitbucket by clicking on the ‘Push’ toolbar button and selecting your Bitbucket repository from the window that appears.

There you have it.  We’ve found using this Mercurial setup very easy, reliable and productive during development.  Let us know you get on.

* not strictly true since you could use REAL Studio’s XML file format but I think it’s much easier to use the VCP format.