Version Control without SVN/CVS
Posted: Thu Oct 19, 2006 7:51 pm
I've been lassoed into helping maintain this website, which recently had to (essentially) start from scratch because a cracker managed to gain FTP access and deleted our configuration files. Since the install was heavily modded, we weren't able to regenerate the config file and gave up.
It occurs to me that this could have been prevented if 1. Better backup policies had been instated (the site had not been backed up once previously) or 2. Version control on configuration files had been used. The second option, to me, is preferable, because there are multiple admins for the website, and version control would help keep a changelog and make it extremely easy to revert back to earlier versions if a well-meaning admin accidently crashes the application.
Unfortunantely, the webhost we are currently on does not offer version control of any type. I do have access to servers that do have SVN, but due to relatively high developer turnover rates (four years max), that is not an option, as I will be gone in a year and a half.
So, what I'd like to do is have a version-control-like set of policies that emulate SVN as best as possible. It's surely going to be a pain, after all, that's why they wrote CVS/SVN. But has anyone had experience with this sort of situation?
It occurs to me that this could have been prevented if 1. Better backup policies had been instated (the site had not been backed up once previously) or 2. Version control on configuration files had been used. The second option, to me, is preferable, because there are multiple admins for the website, and version control would help keep a changelog and make it extremely easy to revert back to earlier versions if a well-meaning admin accidently crashes the application.
Unfortunantely, the webhost we are currently on does not offer version control of any type. I do have access to servers that do have SVN, but due to relatively high developer turnover rates (four years max), that is not an option, as I will be gone in a year and a half.
So, what I'd like to do is have a version-control-like set of policies that emulate SVN as best as possible. It's surely going to be a pain, after all, that's why they wrote CVS/SVN. But has anyone had experience with this sort of situation?