Hosted Subversion + Deploy to Server Solution

I've taken it upon myself (as it is my own duty to do so) to better manage my development projects. This is a good idea for a variety of reasons, but namely it will help keep me sane as I track each project.

The first thing that I wanted to accomplish is to version control my code. Lately, I have been doing it on my local development machine. While fine for basic versioning, it is not a good idea as a backup solution. Before when I was only working on projects that were not bringing in any consistent income I was trying to look for a free solution. There are actually quite a few stripped down free hosted solutions out there.

However, I needed something more as my project base is growing. Naturally, I did a Google search and found a few posts of others who were in the same boat as I. After going through the list of comments on both posts, I decided to try out the one on Snook.ca a try near the bottom. The solution is a service known as Springloops. It sounded quite intriguing as the description mentioned not only Subversion but also remote server deployment.

The latter was a huge plus for me as I was recent talking to a friend of mine how I wanted to build a ColdFusion app that developers could use to schedule pushes of their code to their various servers. Alas, this solves my own personal issue.

Springloops has a variety of plans to meet your needs. After browsing through their offerings I decided to give their 31-day trial of the Flowerpot plan a try.

Sign-up was a breeze and very friendly. After receiving an email of my account info, I logged in and began setting up two projects I am working on right now. I am really liking the interface--everything is very easy to use and there is also plenty of help available if you need it. As I mentioned, Springloops is not only a Subversion host but they also give you the option to deploy a version to a set of servers that you have defined for a given project. In my plan, they allow me to define three servers for each project (traditionally these would be a development, staging, and production server). Alas, I only have a need for the latter two as my "development" server is actually my local box. I use staging to allow clients to preview the work before it goes live.

When setting up a project's SVN repo, you can choose to import a pre-existing repository with all of its history in tact. A very nice option for those who need it.

Overall, I have been very happy with Springloops. Only time will tell if I will stay with them, but for now they are exactly what I am looking for. I will keep you updated.