Ideas for version control on an office network?

Question

I work at a small consulting firm. We have about 40 employees using Windows XP and Windows 7 on a LAN. We use Linux fileservers to store all project files (MS-Office, ArcGIS, AutoCAD, images, etc.). Lately, version control has become a problem -- people accessing the wrong versions of work files can mean wasted effort, not to mention hard feelings. I'm looking for suggestions to for version control or some kind of file management without adding thick layers of software and/or expense. Any ideas are welcome.

Update:

Please note that there is no programming code involved here. I'm referring mostly to MS-Office files -- documents, spreadsheets, databases, etc.

? · Accepted Answer

There are two ways you could accomplish this.

1) You could use the Tortoise SVN plug-in for Windows to let people check things into and out of a subversion repository. In the end, this would be easier, but it has a steep learning curve.

2) You could use a web based document management software, such as Knowledge Tree http://www.knowledgetree.com/ (look for "document management" on freshmeat.net for more). This is much easier to learn, but can make it a pain to check things in and out.

Jim · Answer

you might try out svn.  there is a great newcomer to the game, veracity, but it is not quite grown up yet.

there is also RCS and CVS.  it must use a file locking protocol.  It has been so long, I don't remember which ones do binary files.

[I just read, and RCS and CVS ansd SVN all do binary, but svn automatically recognizes binary.]

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Ideas for version control on an office network?

2 Answers