Halbert wrote:
> I tend to use Dreamweaver 95% of the time while she uses Visual Studio.

The simplest for you would probably be to set up Visual Source Safe. This is 
a source code control system that does locking. I.e., while she's modifying 
the file, you cannot.  In this mechanism, there's one server that holds all 
versions of all the code, and you take copies to your machine to work on 
them (or, hopefully, serve them from your production servers). You make a 
change by telling VSS to lock the file, at which point the read-only flag 
gets cleared, and when you're done you check it back in, which updates the 
central copy (with the possibility of getting old copies back, of course).

One advantage is that VSS interface is built into Visual Studio, so it'll 
automatically check out a file when she starts editting it, for example. I 
don't know about Dreamweaver.

The other mechanism you might want to look into is something like 
"subversion", aka "svn".  There are Windows clients (TortiseSVN for one) 
that integrates it into Explorer, so you can check out files and put them 
back with a right-click menu, along with little shortcut-style icons telling 
you the status of the files. In this sort of system, you get a full copy of 
all the files, and you make changes locally and then push the changes back 
up. If she makes changes while you are, whoever pushes the changes back 
second has to "resolve" any conflicts. If you changed the top and she 
changed the bottom, it works fine. If you and she changed the same lines, 
the second person will have to basically re-edit the file to say "this is 
what it should look like combined".

There's a third mechanism exemplified by "git", where everyone has an entire 
copy of the entire history of the system locally. This is more useful in 
things like open-source software, or if you're often disconnected from the 
network. You can save multiple sets of changes locally, then push them up to 
the central server later. This is probably way overkill for two people.

HTH.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Why is there a chainsaw in DOOM?
   There aren't any trees on Mars.

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