Back to the Shoebox Project

It has been a couple of weeks since I've blogged anything about the Shoebox project.  I did spent some time working on the dynamic data project ... but as side projects go, I've had to spend time on other things lately.

Creating the Source Code Repository and Solution

Now that I am ready to start on the source code, the first thing that I did was to create a source code repository.  For personal use, I like the idea of a source code repository for 2 main reasons -- 1) so that I can easily back up the source code, and 2) so that I can see when I have made changes with the option to revert if necessary.  When I work with a group, the source repository is obviously indispensable for sharing the source which would be a 3rd main reason.

When I work in a group, the repository is (almost always, if not always) on a server that gets backed up.  On my own home system, I don't have a main server machine that gets backed up.  So, what do I do?  I do have an external disk attached to my network.  I also have a USB flash disk.  I put my source code repository on the flash disk and then copy the flash disk to the network drive periodically.

As I recently completed a contract, I have several little utility or investigation projects that I had created during the course of the contract that I now need to back up and track on my own.  So, as soon as I created the source code repository (I called the folder SourceRepository) on my flash disk, I put a couple of the utility or investigation projects into the source repository.  I'll need to move the other projects of this nature into this source repository.

I then created the solution file.  As this project's code name is Shoebox, I named the solution using today's date and this code name: 2008-09-04-Shoebox.  As soon as I created this empty solution, I added it to the source repository.

Now I am ready to start adding projects to this solution.