Using a Versioning System on your PC

Okay, this is not just for geeks. Have you ever felt that it would be great if you could undo your mistakes on any file on your computer - if you could just rollback any file to a previous version? I've had that thought on many occassions, when I've accidentally overwritten my files and lost important stuff.

Well, this is how geeks do it in a software job. Every file is part of a versioning system. You basically pull a file out of the repository (check-out), work on it, and then check it back in (commit) when you have made your changes. If someone else is also working on the file, you can merge the changes. If you make a mistake, you can get a previous version from the repository. So, any mistake you make can be corrected and you can never really lose your files unless you somehow crash the repository.

You can also install CVS (that's the most common implementation) on your home computer and get the same advantages. You wouldn't have to worry about messing up your files ever! There is this great implementation of CVS for windows called Tortoise CVS. It works as a plugin to your Windows Explorer so that you can simply right click on a file and add it to the repository, or update it with a previous version. There are other versionoing systems such as Subversion (You could use Tortoise SVN), or WinCVS that you can use on Windows, but I really recommmend Tortoise CVS for the simplicity. For anyone who doesn't want to be bothered with the geekiness of using CVS, this is a great solution!