SVN plugin for VS2008

Question

I'm using VisualSVN with my Visual Studio 2008 and I have to run some sort of commit monitor in the tray area to see if the local copy of project is out of date.

I have two problems with that:

1. I hate to have it in two places, I want to see that as an icon in my VS,

2. The commit monitor software keeps an eye on several projects, when I work on project 1 (which VS knows about), I'm not interested in other projects.

I couldn't find any addons for Visual Studio to do that and was wondering if anyone knows about anything good.

Answer 1

Generally, you have 2 options (besides running commitmonitor as you already do):

• run update before you start to change something
• ignore it all and merge with any updates when you want to commit.

SVN's really designed around the 'wait until you're ready and merge it all together' model, as there's no guarantee that even if you update your working copy immediately before starting to modify it, someone won't commit changes before you've had a chance to commit. So, let the system do the work for you.

The ultimate alternative if you are worried about conflicts is to use the svn:needs-lock property which means you will have to get a lock on any file you modify before modifying it, and you won't be able to get a lock on a file someone else is modifying.

You might like to ask the VisualSVN people if they'd add an option to check the repository when a project is loaded by VS (or run AnkhSVN and implement this feature yourself).

Answer 2

Work has started in AnkhSVN in this direction, we started to implement the 'Synchronize View' that's also used in Eclipse/Subclipse. The things still missing are: Scheduled checking of the repository, and maybe a notification inside VS to tell you that something has changed.

Right now you can manually refresh this view to see local and remote changes (and merges which can be potential conflicts). Patches are welcome to extend this feature :-)

Answer 3

I'm assuming VisualSVN is your "server" (even if running on the same machine).

AnkhSVN is a good Visual Studio Integrated SVN Client.