Solving source code versioning issues – without version control

This year, I've been working with several small-scale software development projects, and in all of those projects, I've used FTP, the web and email – not version control – to share source code back and forth between my development machine(s) and the customer. As you can guess, there are several issues with this approachs, but with simple common sense, things are easier to manage.

First and foremost, it is imperative to keep track of changes that each developer does. A simple comment marker with your name (and possibly a date) will do just fine. Secondly, you must have a proper file comparison utility. Otherwise, it is a nightmare. My choice is UltraCompare Professional from IDM.

Thirdly, if you know you are doing concurrent edits to the same file, it is best to communicate who has done what. With this information, it is much easier to manage the changes.

The fourth and final tip is about clocks on your computers. If you are on different timezones (say, USA/Europe/Asia), make sure you are aware about the fact that file times only show local time. When you zip for instance a Visual Studio project folder (or a solution folder), the timestamps on the files will show the local times. Don't be fooled by this.