Many of our clients and colleagues have been migrating toward using versioning systems to manage the development of their websites and their clients' websites. Advantage Labs uses an open source version control software system called Subversion.

At Lab Hours this week, I worked with Tammy on setting up a webserver environment on her laptop so that she could "check out" working copies of her live websites to run locally on her Mac. Setting up the local webserver is a topic that we will leave to a full feature on the site (several knowledgebase articles currently exist on this site and will be updated). But, this tip is related to software tools used to manage your versioning system once it is set up -- namely: setting up the local MySQL database, checking out working copies from server SVN repositories, checking changes back into the repository.

If you are not familiar or comfortable with handling these sorts of tasks from a terminal window command-line enviroment, you will need software applications with their GUI goodness. While there are many open source and proprietary tools to handle these tasks, the ones that I have settled on for working on my OS X Macbook are:

CocoaMySQL (http://cocoamysql.sourceforge.net/)
CocoaMySQL is a tool for creating, modifying, browsing and managing MySQL databases like the ones used to run Drupal. When running Drupal on your local computer, you need to manage Drupal's MySQL database (databases if you have more than one site you are developing). This is the tool I've settled on. It's leaner than PHPMySQL a common tool used for the same purpose. It is efficient and intuitive (IMHO) within CocoaMySQL to create the necessary databases, import data dumps you download from the live server, delete old databases, etc. all from one window.

Zigversion (http://zigversion.com/)
This is what is referred to as an SVN client. It connects to your sites' SVN repositories that live on a remote server (usually your site's webhost server), keeps tracks of changes to the repository, keeps track of the changes you make on your local working copy and checks changes back into the repository for implementation on the live site. Zigversion does this simply and, mostly, within one handy window with clear markers and WYSIWYG features. While this is technically a proprietary product, it does allow free licensing for non-commercial use. Read the stipulations on the site.

SVNX (http://www.lachoseinteractive.net/en/community/subversion/svnx/features/)
If you want/need a fully open source SVN client software, I'd recommend SVNX. It has the same set of features at Zigversion but is a bit more complex in its display and functionality. I found it useful but occasionally confusing, thus leading me to the sleeker Zigversion. But, it's worth checking out if you'd like to compare. The two programs can run simultaneously and can even be used to manage the same working copies without causing any file-level problems.

For database and SVN versioning management in Mac OSX, these tools will help tremendously. Look for future tips on related topics.