svn
svn is an open-source revision control system. Revision control systems allow multiple folk to be working on the same file at the same time, keeps track of file changes, and are very useful for when multiple people are working on one programming project.
At the beginning of my summer 2010 project, the submission site wasn't version controlled. This made me sad. We eventually got our code checked into the repository, and it was happiness. And then we ran into conflicts and files not updating properly, warenting this, a collection of tips for using svn.
Once you have your files under version control, always use svn to move/delete them. If you dare use the shell's normal mv or rm instead of svn mv or svn rm, you'll run into a boat load of twouble when trying to commit.
Usually, you can get yourself out of this trouble by svn up'ing the directory and properly (re)moving it.
svn was complaining about "File [blab] already exists", probably due to me not deleting the a file with the same name properly. Usually, you want to move the offending file out of this directory. Then 'svn up' should bring it back, and you can delete it properly. Then you move back the no-longer-offending file, (make sure there isn't a .svn folder), and 'svn add' it back.
However, sometimes, 'svn up' won't bring back the poorly-deleted file (in my case, the folder.) I had to delete the parent folder, and then 'svn up', which brought the poorly-deleted file, which I then 'svn delete'd, and proceeded with the above advice.
An awesome partner to svn are the bug-tracking tools that mesh awesomely with it. In MuddSD, we used Redmine, and for the submission site (which contains a commenting system), we just started using Trac. Those messages you save during every commit are easily accessible, along with the last time specific files were changed, easy (pretty) ways to view differences between files (think wikipedia differences).
Of course, bug-tracking are bug-trackers' main feature, and they beat a Google Docs Spreadsheet any day. The submission team went through the bugs/features we found during our visit to UC Riverside (one of the clients) and agreed on how to rate them on the various scales Trac gives us.
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