15 minute guide to the ultimate workflow

1st minute: Create a new project

The essential element of a project in Springloops is its source repository - the place where your code is stored. The significant feature of the source repository is that it remembers each state of your project. Hence, your source is safe from lost files and overwritten changes. Creating a new project, you are asked only to provide the project name. As you can notice, below the name form, there is also generated a URL address to the source repository.

We connect with the repository every time we update files with our teammates changes or send your changes.

2nd minute: Assign project members

Now we can build our project team. The people we assign to our newely created project in the Team tab will be able to access the project and its source repository.

To access the project and its source they will have to authenticate themselves. Here, they use the same login and password as to their Springloops web account.

3rd minute: Get the working copy

The working copy is a directory on your PC where you store files of the project. It represents the current version of the repository. It is only your own development of the project that takes place in the working copy. Each project member has its own working copy.

You can download a working copy, work anywhere and submit your changes when you are back online. Creation of a working copy is called checkout of the repository. Checkout downloads the latest version of the repository. And this is the step we have to do with our Subversion client.

Choose Subversion Client for your operating system

4-8th minute: Go into the flow

Having the working copy, we can start developing the project. Each time we accomplish something (Ex: a new function, text corrections, or a bug fix), we should send it to the project repository so as our teammates stay up-to-date with our progress. This action is called a commit. In the log message of each commit a short description of what has been done should be included.

The version number is incremented by one whenever a new change has been committed. Each version is called a revision. Each revision includes all changes made since the last revision. We can deploy a particular revision on a web server and continue our work, while someone else can preview our progress or start testing.

We use Update action to keep our working copy up-to-date with the project repository.

9th minute: Track the progress

Changes our teammates make are gathered on the Log tab in the Springloops project account. We can see there our colleagues log messages and files they have modified. Although you can browse the Log message in your Subversion client, Springloops Log gives you a different - better - approach to display it.

10-12th minute: Deploy to web server

When our project is advanced enough we can deploy it to the web server. Web servers in Springloops are divided according to the roles they serve. There are production, staging and development servers. Having just started developing our project, we can make a preview of the progress to the development server.

13-15th minute: Live with the ultimate workflow

At this stage we know the bases necessary to use the ultimate work flow. The following simple rules make your web development easier, faster and professional:

• Commit only accomplished items, commit frequently
• Update your working copy regularly
• Deploy to the development server firstly for early previews, deploy to the staging server for testing and clients previews, as well as deploy to the production server things perfect enough.