Hey everyone. You're probably wondering - what is this, and why do we have it?

For the last few months, we've been using Basecamp for our online forums and wiki. It's a great tool, but it hasn't given us the flexibility we need to run a large software project. This should change all that.

So, why the move?
Assembla has two key features that we will be using a lot to make sure the groupd collaboration works well. They are subversion, and Trac. They are covered below, so read up on that there. This is just a quick into assembla and where everything is:

BC: messages
A: under Flow - you can select who receives your messages via the link under the message body box

BC: To-do
A: Trac (to-do on some serious steroids)

BC: Milestones
A: Milesones

BC: writeboards
A: Wiki

BC: Chat
A: Chat

What is Subversion?

When you're working on a software project, it's hard to keep code organized. I might have some code I wrote in PHP on my compter, Hamy might have some javascript he wrote on his computer. In order to move forward and work productively, we need to be working on the same copy of the website with the same code. That's where Subversion comes in.

Subversion keeps a copy of our code on the web where it is accessible by anyone in the group. When you start working, you "check out" the code and a copy of the entire site is downloaded to your computer. When you're done, you "commit" your changes back to the server, called a repository, and your changes are permanently saved where the rest of the group can see them.

Simple enough, right? Let's say two people have both checked out the site and they're working on the same page. What happens when the first person saves their changes to the server and the other person's work is out of date? Subversion will let them know so they don't overwrite each other's changes. The second person to save will have to "merge" their work with that of the other person. It's prety painless once you get used to it, and it can help avoid a lot of problems in large groups.

What is Trac?

Earlier we talked about having a to-do list system where you could see things that needed to be done and sign up to do them. Trac will let us do that, and it's basically amazing. Items on the to-do list are called "tickets," and they can be tied to "milestones" and "topics." Milestones are project goals - like "have x working by august". A topic might be "database setup" or "quiz system."

You can create tickets and, if you want, you can even assign them to particular people. When you start working on a ticket you set it's status to "accepted" so other people know you're working on it. You can add comments to the ticket to talk about issues or problems, etc.. and even better, you can add a link to subversion so people can see what you did.