版本控制：一台远程服务器上的中央存储库和分支

Question

There is a lot of reading regarding Centralized and Distributed Version Control, and i am now thinking about using Mercurial (or Git..) to serve a sort of 'Centralized Version Control' for one of our applications. One of the problems i face is, that due to the fact that our application's IP is registered with several Banks, and other PCI regulations involved, my developers would struggle to test their changes locally, it would just don't work. (Testing Payment Gateways implementation and other stuff) So, my only solution (correct me if i'm wrong) would be to setup a Centralized repository and developers owned repositories on the same (remote) server and file editing via ftp (or SSH)...where commits, clones, pushes and branches would take place remotely, not locally... and developers would test their changes in real time. I am not even sure if any Version Control system would satisfy my needs. You guys always have great ideas, what would be my best bet for such situation?

Answer 1

I think, you went The Wrong and The Bad way with FTP|SSH

For any DVCS it's natural to have any amount of clones for repository(ies). It can be used in your case also with easy.

Recipe (Mercurial in mind, still usable as idea for Git probably) will use clones+pushes+hooks

In deep:

• every team|developer have the usual local repository, in which local work have to be done and remote work collected with pulls from other team|Central Repo
• commits to local repo have to be replicated in hook into Central Repo, where all tests must be performed in Central Repository working dir, updated to tip state. Due to 2-nd condition, hook on DEV-repo must be able to login to Central Repo in order to perform hg pull + hg up (because hg push doesn't update remote working dir after operation - maybe can be solved by hook on Cenral Repo and in this case only push from Dev will be OK in Dev-hook)