I'll give you the original and the "merged" version of a post titled "YOU! Guess what? Version control is important!"
Original
[b]If you don't use it, your backups will rust and you can't recover from screw-ups without your backups![/b]
This is the tutorial on version control that I've been promising for a while. Version control is a huge benefit for any ROM hacker (and any programmer for that matter), but I guess that most of you have no idea what I'm talking about. "Since ignorance is trolling and we hate trolls", I am here to fix that.
There is a LOT of text in this tutorial, so I've made good use of spoiler boxes to make it look not quite so intimidating. Basically this will be in Q&A format, with the answers spoilered.
So.
[i]"OK, so just what [b]is[/b] version control?"[/i]
[spoiler=Well?]A version control system is a system (bunch of small programs, and a way of using them) for controlling (keeping track of, and making sure you have them available) versions of stuff. Each time you work on your ROM, you create a new version of it.
So basically, it helps you keep organized backups of your ROM.[/spoiler]
[i]"But Zahlman, I'm already a good little hacker and I [url="http://www.feuniverse.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=8695"]don't need Ike's sympathy[/url] because I keep regular backups!"[/i]
[spoiler=Honest!]Mhm, sure you do. We all forget things from time to time. I know I sure do. Besides, keeping track of back-ups is a pain. If you just use "myhack.gba.bak" as your backup file, then you only have one backup, and you're screwed if you want to go back more than one step because you realize you messed up big-time. Or maybe you'll want to look at a really old version to see how you did something before, or check progress on your storyline, or compare your new map (which you worked on in several stages) to the old one from a few weeks ago. Or maybe you'll just get nostalgic.
You need to put them all somewhere that you won't lose them, keep them all labelled so you know what's what, and organize them in folders and stuff. It takes time and saps your creativity and makes you want to back-up less often. When it occurs to you that you might want to look at the old map some time, that discourages you from making regular back-ups while you work on the new map. And then when you mess something up, the next think you know you're starting the whole map over again.
You have huge amounts of hard-drive space, so you really should be backing up really frequently. My hard drive is big enough to store about 20,000 copies of FE7 (assuming we got rid of everything else), and that was a relatively small hard drive, almost 2 years ago.
Version control lets you back up so easily that it becomes second nature to do it every time you make a meaningful change. It gives you a convenient place to write comments about what got changed with each new version, and a convenient way to review those comments so you can quickly find an old version - without having to come up with clever file names for everything. And in some cases it can conserve hard drive space, basically by only storing the changes from one version to the next, instead of copying the entire new version (like you end up having to do if you back it up manually). Oh, and they can be set up to share the versions with another hacker, which lets you both work on the hack and keep track of who did what. (In some cases you can even both be working on the same file simultaneously, and you are given tools to "merge" the changes you both made and fix up any conflicting changes. With the VCS we'll be using, that won't work for a ROM file, but it should work with the full NM3 set-up once it's done.)
You really have no reason not to use it. Not even "ignorance", now that you've read this far.[/spoiler]
[i]"OK, I'm convinced. So, which version control system should I use?"[/i]
[spoiler=o_O]There are several to choose from. This tutorial covers single-user set-ups, and any of them will do the trick there. When you have more people involved, almost any VCS is still good (certainly better than nothing), but you may find that some are nicer to work with than others. But I'll let you do the research if it matters to you. Or you can be lazy and practical (like me) and just follow the tutorial and use what I use.
We're going to be using the SVN (doesn't actually stand for anything; rather, it's short for "subversion", which is kind of a pun) version control system. SVN has a major advantage for Windows users: there is a version of SVN called TortoiseSVN which integrates with Windows so that we get a whole bunch of context menu options for SVN functionality. Extremely convenient; this way, we don't even have to start up the 'svn' program itself.
But we are also going to download a command-line SVN package so that we can run command-line svn and svnadmin commands. This is useful for advanced users, and doesn't cost you anything but HD space. (The two SVN set-ups will share the same "repository" data, and they both understand a common data format and treat it the same way, so there won't be any conflicts.) But more importantly, it will allow you to run a (very useful, IMO) helper script which I am going to provide for you.[/spoiler]
[i]"Great, let's get started!"[/i]
Yes, let's! [s]Starting with the next post.[/s]
As you can see, there are spoiler descriptions but we don't need them any more neither will we in the future, so they can be discarded fine.
This is what comes out after the merge:
[b]If you don't use it, your backups will rust and you can't recover from screw-ups without your backups![/b]
This is the tutorial on version control that I've been promising for a while. Version control is a huge benefit for any ROM hacker (and any programmer for that matter), but I guess that most of you have no idea what I'm talking about. "Since ignorance is trolling and we hate trolls", I am here to fix that.
There is a LOT of text in this tutorial, so I've made good use of spoiler boxes to make it look not quite so intimidating. Basically this will be in Q&A format, with the answers spoilered.
So.
[i]"OK, so just what [b]is[/b] version control?"[/i]
<span onClick="this.nextSibling.style.display=((this.nextSibling.style.display=='none')?'':'none');" onclick="this.nextSibling.style.display='';"><div class='quotetop' align="center">[b]Well?:[/b] Click Here To Show/Hide This Text</div></span><span style='display:none;'><div class='quotemain' >A version control system is a system (bunch of small programs, and a way of using them) for controlling (keeping track of, and making sure you have them available) versions of stuff. Each time you work on your ROM, you create a new version of it.
So basically, it helps you keep organized backups of your ROM.</div></span>
[i]"But Zahlman, I'm already a good little hacker and I [url=http://www.feuniverse.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=8695]don't need Ike's sympathy[/url] because I keep regular backups!"[/i]
<span onClick="this.nextSibling.style.display=((this.nextSibling.style.display=='none')?'':'none');" onclick="this.nextSibling.style.display='';"><div class='quotetop' align="center">[b]Honest!:[/b] Click Here To Show/Hide This Text</div></span><span style='display:none;'><div class='quotemain' >Mhm, sure you do. We all forget things from time to time. I know I sure do. Besides, keeping track of back-ups is a pain. If you just use "myhack.gba.bak" as your backup file, then you only have one backup, and you're screwed if you want to go back more than one step because you realize you messed up big-time. Or maybe you'll want to look at a really old version to see how you did something before, or check progress on your storyline, or compare your new map (which you worked on in several stages) to the old one from a few weeks ago. Or maybe you'll just get nostalgic.
You need to put them all somewhere that you won't lose them, keep them all labelled so you know what's what, and organize them in folders and stuff. It takes time and saps your creativity and makes you want to back-up less often. When it occurs to you that you might want to look at the old map some time, that discourages you from making regular back-ups while you work on the new map. And then when you mess something up, the next think you know you're starting the whole map over again.
You have huge amounts of hard-drive space, so you really should be backing up really frequently. My hard drive is big enough to store about 20,000 copies of FE7 (assuming we got rid of everything else), and that was a relatively small hard drive, almost 2 years ago.
Version control lets you back up so easily that it becomes second nature to do it every time you make a meaningful change. It gives you a convenient place to write comments about what got changed with each new version, and a convenient way to review those comments so you can quickly find an old version - without having to come up with clever file names for everything. And in some cases it can conserve hard drive space, basically by only storing the changes from one version to the next, instead of copying the entire new version (like you end up having to do if you back it up manually). Oh, and they can be set up to share the versions with another hacker, which lets you both work on the hack and keep track of who did what. (In some cases you can even both be working on the same file simultaneously, and you are given tools to "merge" the changes you both made and fix up any conflicting changes. With the VCS we'll be using, that won't work for a ROM file, but it should work with the full NM3 set-up once it's done.)
You really have no reason not to use it. Not even "ignorance", now that you've read this far.</div></span>
[i]"OK, I'm convinced. So, which version control system should I use?"[/i]
<span onClick="this.nextSibling.style.display=((this.nextSibling.style.display=='none')?'':'none');" onclick="this.nextSibling.style.display='';"><div class='quotetop' align="center">[b]o_O:[/b] Click Here To Show/Hide This Text</div></span><span style='display:none;'><div class='quotemain' >There are several to choose from. This tutorial covers single-user set-ups, and any of them will do the trick there. When you have more people involved, almost any VCS is still good (certainly better than nothing), but you may find that some are nicer to work with than others. But I'll let you do the research if it matters to you. Or you can be lazy and practical (like me) and just follow the tutorial and use what I use.
We're going to be using the SVN (doesn't actually stand for anything; rather, it's short for "subversion", which is kind of a pun) version control system. SVN has a major advantage for Windows users: there is a version of SVN called TortoiseSVN which integrates with Windows so that we get a whole bunch of context menu options for SVN functionality. Extremely convenient; this way, we don't even have to start up the 'svn' program itself.
But we are also going to download a command-line SVN package so that we can run command-line svn and svnadmin commands. This is useful for advanced users, and doesn't cost you anything but HD space. (The two SVN set-ups will share the same "repository" data, and they both understand a common data format and treat it the same way, so there won't be any conflicts.) But more importantly, it will allow you to run a (very useful, IMO) helper script which I am going to provide for you.</div></span>
[i]"Great, let's get started!"[/i]
Yes, let's! <strike>Starting with the next post.</strike>[align=right]
Which would be fine if it parsed, but it doesn't parse like intended, as you can see here:
http://shrineofseals.net/forum/showthread.php?tid=2067
You've already helped me a lot though, thanks for that. I'll get back if I find out how to fix this myself.
