begin quoting Lan Barnes as of Sat, Oct 21, 2006 at 12:07:41PM -0700: > I shared a note on this thread with an old colleague (actually, he's > pretty young) who has used SVN professionally. Here are his remarks, > which may prove helpful to Andrew and others. > > It's not what you know, it's who you know ;-) > > On Sat, Oct 21, 2006 at 11:18:25AM -0700, MattyJ wrote: > > Assuming that SDSU is mostly windows based (which is indicated by the > > suggestion to use TortoiseSVN, a windows only SVN client), the 'reality of > > the marketplace' might not allow for a system like this that seems simple > > to the average *nix geek, but won't be used much by students.
It's a mix. Most of the students seem to believe that M$ invented computers and the internet; the bookstore stocks Macs; professors are issued M$ boxen by default, and the real work is done on *NIX systems. The CS students are expected to understand how to develop on *NIX, as that's what they've been using since their first CS course. The fact that most of 'em actively avoid how to be productive on a *NIX box despite access, tutorials, guidance, help desk, and documentation just goes to show how deep the M$ rot goes. > > The fact that SVN can basically use any plugin/add-on for Apache opens up > > a whole new world of possibilities: WebDAV comes to mind. I do not think that WebDAV is available. The web-server system is kind of complicated. Adding WebDAV to the Solaris Apache installation isn't hard once you install the SunCC compiler. This would require, as I understand it, root to modify http.conf and to (presumably) point at an htpasswd file in the instructors home directory. > > I set this up for fun some time ago, and only played with it myself, but > > it worked. I'm not sure how it would scale, but Apache scales pretty big, > > in general. Most of the solutions seem to assume that the instructor is running the server machine. Which might not be a bad idea: Andrew, request an account on that iMac or request a replacement. [snip] > > If it were me in this case, I'd try to hide as much of the source control > > stuff from the end users as possible. I don't know what these instructors > > teach, but if it's not computer science these concepts are going to be It's computer science... [snip] > > have never heard of source control. In a university environment, likely > > already strewn with disperate systems, adding one more to the mix might > > turn folks off. I would think that 'Save your work to your Z: drive' is a I had students that mumbled and groaned and called me names; one group came to me and said that they figured I was a complete prat, and then the night before the assignment was due, they typed "rm * .class", and weeks of work just vanished. And then they did "cvs update" and only lost an hour of work. Instant converts! These are the lessons that students *need* to learn. > > lot easier than 'Install putty, generate keys, install TortoiseSVN, > > checkout, edit, check in, put a comment, etc.' ....sure, leave it for me to train the new hires how to do such things. I work with someone who, despite using version control, has several _different_ copies of their source code scattered across their system; they apparently copy the file out of the source-control repository, modify it, and then copy it back to checkin, or to another of the working directories, if that's where they happen to be working that day. [chop] -- _ |\_ \| -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
