In some small dev projects in the last months I was looking for a source control system. I liked to use Microsoft’s Team Foundation Services. But I was and I am not able to use them with my current VS 2010. I cannot use the final version (http://tfs.visualstudio.com) because of a bug in (my?) Visual Studio. (Forum thread related to this problem: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/TFService/thread/1b6673ec-8c42-4896-9049-49f17b85bf65)

Anyway…

So I wonder if I could use Git. – It’s a “[…] a distributed revision control and source code management (SCM) system with an emphasis on speed.” (Source: Wikipedia).

There is GitHub.com where you can host public visible projects for free. For “private” projects you have to pay (https://github.com/plans). The pricing is fair! But I was looking for a cost opportunity.

For cloud storage purpose I’m using this cloud storage providers:

• SugarSync
• DropBox
• Box.com

(For data protection on cloud storage I use BoxCryptor.)

For this article I use SugarSync.

In my scenario I have some source code to share between me and other project members. We like to code together. And we need some source control features… With a cloud storage provider I can share local folders with other people… So now:

My aim is to create a cloud storage based source code repository for a small project and share the repository with other developers to work on the same project. My aim *is not* to describe the basics of and the need for source control in software development. (And I do not describe why to do all the steps 😉 )

This are the step to do so:

1. Download and install Git for Windows: http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/downloads/list: “Full installer for official Git for Windows 1.8.0 Featured Beta”
2. Download and install Git Extensions: http://code.google.com/p/gitextensions/downloads/list: “Git Extensions 2.43 Windows installer”. This are some very usefull “GUI” extensions for Git.
3. Download and install Git Source Control Provider for Visual Studio (2012, 2010, 2008): http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/63a7e40d-4d71-4fbb-a23b-d262124b8f4c
4. Download and install – if you like – PowerShell extensions for Git: https://github.com/dahlbyk/posh-git
5. Register for a cloud storage, e.g. SugarSync.
6. Download and install the cloud storage software on your dev machine and log in.
7. Open Visual Studio and create your project as normal. Or open an existing project. It’s the same procedure in both situations.
   

   

8. Right click on the project node or solution node in the Solution Explorer and click “Create Git Repository”
   

   

9. Right click on the project and “commit” the changes.
   

   

   

   

10. Open Git Shell (PowerShell or Bash), navigate to the project source folder.
    

    

    Here you can see that to source folder is recognized as Git enabled folder.

11. The next step is to create the connection to the repository that is shared between project members.
12. Create a local folder for your Git repository and map the folder to your cloud storage.
    

    

    

13. Create an empty folder inside the local repository folder. In this folder the project repository will be created.
    

    

14. Open Git Extensions and create a new repository:
    

    

15. Now you need to connect the local project folder with the repository.
    • git remote add origin “//localhost/c$/github/test project 1”

      

16. The next steps are to create a remote branch and to connect the local branch (“master”) with the remote branch
    • git push origin master:refs/heads/master

      

    • git branch -u origin/master master

      

17. Now you can use “git push” to upload local changes to the repository and “git pull” to download changes from the repository to the local project folder.
18. The final step is to share the cloud storage hosted folder with other project members:
    

    

    

That’s it for the publisher.

The next step is that an invited project member needs to sync the repository folder to it’s local drive and do the following steps:

1. I simulate this by creating a new local project directory “c:\source\test project 1 other member”.
   

   

2. Then initialize the directory with “git init”
   

   

3. Now you need to connect the local project folder with the repository.
   • git remote add origin “//localhost/c$/github/test project 1”
     
     
   • git pull origin master:refs/heads/master 

     

4. The last step is to set the local branch to “track” the remote branch.
   

   

That’s it, again. This are the basics about how to create a local project, a cloud hosted repository, how to share the repository and how to connect to it on a project members site.