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Closed 9 years ago.
I developed an R application and I want to deploy it.
Currently the application consists of a set of functions to be run from the command line, like an R package. In order to deploy it, I am thinking of repackaging R Portable adding the necessary libraries and my code to it. My main problem is choosing a proper GUI toolkit.
Production Environment
My app is a single-user one (i.e. a Desktop application) and the target platform is Windows. It could bootstrap in R and then call the toolkit, or bootstrap, say, in Java and then call the R engine. The GUI should first and foremost feed the app functions. It should also grab the function graphical output.
Possible Alternatives
Here is a potential list of alternatives. I’d like to know if they meet/fit the requisite environement described.
Java JRI is now released only as a part of rJava, but while the latter is clearly documented, I am unable to find docs and tutorials for the former.
As for Deducer, it is presented as a GUI front-end, but I found out that it is also a GUI toolkit
TCL/Tk bindings seem a natural choice for R and are well documented, but someone complains about limitations of this toolkit.
RGtk2 seems interesting and there are also some tutorials around.
gWidgets is one of the rare toolkits to sport a package vignette!
Despite I don’t need a real web application, an interesting option would be interfacing R with JavaScript/HTML. As most of us, I am familiar with this environment and the app could benefit of the many JS libraries.
The problem is that the beautiful Shiny server and rApache are for Linux only and this is probably true probably Concerto too. Instead Rserve runs on Windows and, while there is no official JS client, I found the third party rserve-js and also a node.js client.
Rook, by the same author of rApache, should be platform agnostic (isn't it?).
R Server Pages could work, but I didn't find examples on the functions HttpDaemon and HttpRequest in the vignette or reference manual.
I run some simple examples with gWidgetsWWW. It works, but it seems to produce canned web pages, without the possibility of modifying the HTML code.
EDIT
Let me clarify my question. I am not surveying your personal preferences.
The technologies or products mentioned here tend to be very young and not widespread. It would be very unpleasant to discover, after investing months of code, that they are not yet ready or don’t fit production. So I would like to know (not your subjective tastes, but) if they are able to work in the environment described above.
We have created a kind of webapp building on rApache and Ruby on Rails beside some other technologies at rapporter.net - that turned out to act rather a framework to host R-based statistical applications in the means of Rapplications instead of our initial goal to create a user-friendly online front-end to R. I'd warmly suggest to check out our features, as you might save tons of resources by not dealing with server-side, CMS and other boring issues, but could concentrate on the statistical tool.
Anyway, beside promoting our stuff, let me summarize my experiences:
rApache is definitely ready for production, but please note that only for rather stateless algorithms (by default Apache would start bunch of workers so the same user/client would end up interacting with different R sessions in each query). E.g. RServe would be a better alternative for a stateful application.
AFAIK Shiny server is meant to host dedicated statistical tools and applications -- just like our Rapplication service with or without DB backend -- with some customizable user input. You would need some technical skills to do so and also providing a (HA) environment might require way too much extra resources. This can be a huge advantage or disadvantage based on your requirements and expectations.
The hugest issue in such question should be security (like using RAppArmor or sandboxR), not just the R connector back-end, as users will interact with your servers (if hosted in the cloud). Desktop applications are a bit more developer-friendly, but supporting all major platforms can be a no-no in the era of tablets and smartphones. The cloud app can run on any device with a browser.
You should choose the optimal solution based on your requirements. There are bunch of tools ready for production, and each has its own advantages and special use cases. Just check out which related packages/applications are still under development with support, and answer a few questions like:
Is there any need to connect to databases?
What types of user input is needed (e.g. only parameters, datasets, R commands)?
Desktop/cloud app? Are you sure? If the later, would you like to care with the setup, maintenance and support?
Do you run any computational intensive tasks?
Do you want to implement an application to help users with repetitive and standardized tasks or rather providing a rather general and extensible software?
Do you need a responsive application with interactive setup or using that for reporting purposes?
What output formats do you need?
What other technologies are you familiar with? It's rather hard to built a Meteor-based app with a NoSQL backend if you worked with MySQL, PHP, Java or C# in the past.
I'm about to do something similar. The fastest way ( in respect of both deployment time and future application performance) seems to be c# interfacing with R through R.NET. In Visual Studio you will benefit from incredible visualisation options with just few clicks, and setting up interactive/drill down charts it's quite straightforward too. As you also mentioned, RServe (with Java) is another valuable option.
EDIT
If a web application is not required to run on a public ip address the r package Rook it's an interesting option. Some example with Rook: using ggplot2, using googleVis
Related
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Closed 11 years ago.
I have a large web application idea that I would like to work on, which will require secure database interactions, file creation and editing abilities, speed, and output html. It needs to be able to run on a webhost, not a self-run server. What would be the best programming language to use to create it? I am not looking for 'easiest', I am looking for the most useful for the type of web application I wish to develop.
EDIT:
It needs to be able to run on linux.
My pick would be ASP. NET MVC platform with Razor in-line syntax and C# for your code.
.NET ticks all your boxes, plus it has a humongous community, lots of help resources, tutorials etc. online; probably the best coding tool out there (Visual Studio 2010), easy to integrate with cutting-edge stuff like html5, jQuery, CSS3, AJAX etc.
ASP.NET is Microsoft technology, hence you will need to develop on Windows (anything from XP and above will do). C# uses similar syntax to JAVA. Razor is new and fairly easy to use. .NET works very well with most databases and you can even manage both your code and database in the same tool (Visual Studio) depending on which DBMS you'll go for.
And I guess the biggest argument, as Matteo Mosca pointed out is that this very site was built using ASP .NET MVC and, in my opinion, it does its job pretty well.
Please define "webhost". For a lot of people, that means "PHP hoster", and that sort of limits your choice of languages to 1.
For a large webapp, I would definitely take something that runs on the JVM (assuming that your definition of "webhost" includes some shop that accepts .war files for hosting - I usually self-host on virtual machines and run the Play Framework because it is so much easier). On the JVM, you have a choice of frameworks and languages - and again check out Play - and here it starts depending on language skills, specific needs, etcetera. Scala would, for a large app, definitely be on my shortlist these days.
Note that I say "JVM", not "Java". I think the JVM ecosystem rocks - you will probably find a site that takes the standard .war file format to host, if you need a library it is usually there, performance is top-of-the-line. Java as a programming language is so-so, but luckily there is choice these days.
Also, a lot depends on your skills, your preferences, etcetera. I'd say that Python, Perl, Ruby, C# all are very viable languages to build large websites. What development languages do you prefer? At the end of the day, that's a big factor in speed and ease of developement...
I personally would recommend a good structured project (n-layer approach, use of an ORM, etc) under .net 4.0, with the goodness of C# and the Mvc framework (version 3) for the UI part.
If you had bad experiences with .net web forms and you think that sucks, you're right. But the MVC framework is something else, built on the RoR approach.
That's just what I'd use anyway. Consider the power of the features of C# 4.0 (dynamic, linq, generics, etc), the fact that you will be using Visual Studio (which is commonly recognised as the best development ide around) and the great number of free components that are now available, and recently even easy to obtain and use thanks to NuGet package manager.
To give you a great example of a site made with asp.net Mvc - you are on such site right now. Stack Overflow and all the stack exchange sites are built on Asp.net Mvc, if I remember correctly. If not, somebody correct this.
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Looking to add UI testing to my WinForms 3.5 project. Currently using MSTest for unit testing and MSBuild to build it.
One option I am looking at is Test Automation FX.
The product seems to be a bit new and not fully polished, but it seems to work. So, I'm curious if anyone else is using and has good or bad things to say about it.
It is quite a bit cheaper in price ($450) than Test Complete ($2000), so I also am trying to figure out what is lacking or missing, if anything, from Test Automation FX.
I have gone recently through the process of choosing a GUI testing solution, and finally decided to go to TestAutomationFX. Here are the main reasons I made this choice:
It's creating real code (in my case C#), which is invaluable for me: for maintenability, archivability, flexibility and so on. It is much easier to write in C# (I can ask my developers for support) than in a proprietary script language I would have to learn from scratch (or worse: endless grids of non-maintanable dropboxes). It also lets me build a good testing framework
It has seamless integration with NUnit (that my team uses for unit and integration tests). My data driven test come from the same CSVs, and GUI test reports are just appended to unit test reports, granting easy archiving and maintenance
It has much better recognition of the complex UI objects my developers use (Telerik, Infragistic, home-made): 25% of my clics are in x/y mode, versus 67% with TestComplete or Ranorex
Their sales engineers gave me excellent support (at least during the evaluation period)
It has no major bugs nor complex license setup (yes, I'm looking at you, TestComplete guys, see my other post), no runtime license issue, no virtual machine licensing problems either
(though this was not that important to me), it's four times cheaper than other commercial solutions
On the other hand, there is a medium flaw in the application:
The mapping system (ie. mapping AUT-object properties to Test-application-objects) is really touchy: code refactoring needs special attention. I overcome this by commiting to my VCS before every code refactoring. Anyway, does testComplete provide the option of code refactoring.
OK, as you can see, I'm pretty ethusiast with this solution. I've been using it for only a few days, and may run into bigger problems later. But right now it gives me exactly what I wanted, so let me be happy :)
The company I work for uses SilkTest, which works very good. In general, when using automated testing, you would be doing lots of regression testing. What is more important is when you've modified an existing project, then the test software must still be able to run those tests without any errors. (Or, with the errors you'd expect.)
But the market does have lots and lots of other test solutions. In the past, I even saw a test setup which required two computers and additional hardware. The hardware would connect to the monitor, mouse and keyboard of the test system. The other end would connect to a special extension card in the test server. The hardware was there so the server could send keyboard commands to the test system and record anything that happened on the screen. With some additional OCR software, it was very well capable of analysing any errors. Then again, it had a price of six digits and to be honest, I'd rather buy a Porsche for that price and probably would have some cash left to bring two beautiful dates with me while driving through the boulevards in Nice, France...
There's a Wiki page with an overview of all kinds of test software. It doesn't compare them but you can find Test Automation FX there, although it doesn't provide much information. It seems limited to testing Windows GUI's only.
TestComplete provides more information. Then again, comparing the Wiki's it also supports a lot more. Really a lot more. Enough to explain why it's that expensive...
I have just starting to evaluate different GUI automate testing tool. I have looked at Test Automation FX, Ranorex and TestComplete. And the price for the software are in that order.
This is some of my conclusions:
Test Automation FX - Coded in C#, Fully VS integrated. But very slow in finding components and takes much memory and don't fully support DevExpress components
Ranorex - Coded in C#, Have a studio for maintating test but can be fully integrated into VS. Has better object support. And you can find objects in your software by regex expresseion on several thing. Have some problem with DevExpress components but is rather fast to work with.
TestComplete - Uses its on script language. VBscript is the easiest one (C#Script is just awkward notation). This have really good support for DevExpress components and runs the test really fast. But is very expemsive
Right now I don't know which I should use. Ranorex is alite better than Test Automation FX but both lack the full support for DevExpress components. TestComplete is nice but it introduce a new language to the development and is very expensive. But the test scripts are small and the program have more logic in finding very to click.
I have evaluated Test Automation Fx, Although it recognizes all the controls of my application (we use 3rd party controls from infragistics ie netAdvantage controls for WPF)
It is very slow in recognizing the controls and even playback time is quite slow compared to QTP or Ranorex. I would recommend Ranorex over Test Automation Fx.
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We are currently using Fitness for subsystem testing.
we are having lot of issues using the tool, few to mention
Development time for writing Fixture is more then writing the actual code
Issues around check in of the dlls so that Qa can test them
Issues in running Fitnesse for project which uses NHibernate
limited help online
We are planning to use some other tool to do the testing
Few options which we know are
SOAP UI
Story teller
I am not sure whether we will have similar problems with these tools
It would be great to know if someone has experience using these tool and could guide us
In our project we have adopted TDD so we have Nuits for unit testing.
It would be great if anyone is aware of tools/ideas which could extend nunits for subsystem testing as well.
Component testing tools are all about calling functions. Your tests cause functions to be called in "fixtures" that then call into the SUT. Any tool based on this premise will encounter the problems you reference above.
However, most of those problem are manageable. For example you should not be writing lots of fixtures. If you are, something is wrong. Secondly, your fixtures ought to be little more than wiring code to call the APIs in your application. If your fixtures are doing significant work, then something is wrong.
In most FitNesse environments the number of fixtures is rather small. For example, there are over two hundred acceptance tests for fitnesse itself, but the number of fixtures in on the order of a dozen, and they are all relatively simple.
Get help on the fitnesse#yahoogroups.com site. The folks there are usually very responsive to questions.
If you can communicate with your software using text, then I have had success on past projects rolling my own framework using expect.
The framework I cooked up stored tests as XML files, using a simple xUnit style markup. The xml files were then transformed into executable tests using a stylesheet. I ended up transforming the tests into Tcl/Expect, but you could transform them into anything. In fact, if you wanted, you could transform them into multiple languages, depending on your needs.
Several people have kindly reminded me (in the same way you remind you poor dottering grandfather about the drool on his chin) that we are in the 21st century when they inquire why I would choose Tcl over some more modern language. As it turns out, for the purposes of this kind of testing, I haven't yet found a better choice. The Tcl language still kicks butt in this area. Trust me, I didn't wake up one day and say to myself "self, what I need a test framework implemented in a scripting language everyone will hate!"
Believe it or not, I really was looking for a tool, any tool, that had the following characteristics:
Cross platform. This was non-negotiable. We do a lot of cross platform development and we already use WAY too many tools that don't support cross platform development.
Simple syntax. Say what you want about Tcl, but the syntax is very regular. I knew that some native code would probably creep even into the XML files (and originally it was Tcl only, no XML) and I wanted the syntax to be comprehensible to a non-programmer. This simplicity is a core strength of Tcl. As it turns out, it also made transforming the XML easier too.
Free. My favorite price ;-)
Writing tests as simple xml files allowed non-programmers to write customer acceptance level tests - no programming required.
Easily extended.
I did not set out to home grow this to the extent I have. Initially, I looked at established test frameworks like DejaGnu and android. Mostly they had way too many features. They were so feature laden that I didn't think they would be easy for a project to start using without a lot of up front training. Looking at DejaGnu, got me interested in Tcl in general, and after a brief look at tcltest, I almost gave up. Both DejaGnu and tcltest assume you are an advanced Tcl scripter, which I didn't think anyone at my company ever would be. In addition, I wanted the test framework (if possible) to support an xUnit type of test framework and neither of these tools did.
Eventually I found TclTkUnit, a Tcl based testing framework that is designed along xUnit lines. It was only a short leap of logic to realize I could run TclTkUnit in Expect instead of tclsh and get everything I needed.
As it ended up getting used more, I added another stylesheet to render the xml files nicely in a web browser. The test framework generated it's own documentation.
On another project we needs a very basic sim / stim environment to emulate a person throwing switches and pushing buttons on a piece of hardware we didn't have. It only took a few hours to hack the test framework to function as a simulator. Creating the framework took some work, but we felt that it did pay benefits in the long run. I really believe that these types of unforseen consequences of creating your own tools is why people in the agile community & XP in particular have always been such strong advocates.
We have adopted a Fitnesse-based but practically-code-free approach using GenericFixture (google for Anubhava to find his wordpress site) for Fitnesse.
What this allows us to do is to create "executable test narratives" using a language that is friendly to the business-side (as opposed to the technical-side). This language, which is very easily defined, practically without coding, in Generic Fixture, is called a DSL (domain specific language). So we can write our test narratives using e.g. medical terms or even in a language other than English. Basically what we get is transforming our Use Cases into executable narratives.
We are starting to use it in a large project (15 ppl for 2 years) and it seems (so far) to have a good future.
It easily allows Test Driven Development or test-creation after development (traditional approach).
It is wiki-based (Fitnesse) and its versioning and refactoring funcitonality has proven so far sufficient.
I can give more info if anyone is interested.
best regards,
Aristotelis.
We use unit-testing frameworks like NUnit to drive our subsystem tests as well - the tests don't care how they are run. It doesn't have fitnesse's document-based approach, though.
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As recently as several years ago, the developers actually made the builds that went to clients. This was obviously a disaster for reasons too numerous to list.
Then when we started to learn the errors of our ways, we looked for a way to auto-build the entire application on a dedicated build machine. The culture at that time was very averse to bringing in outside tools, so we built our own autobuild system by writing a VB app.
This worked fine for a while, until the project's structure started to change, new projects were added, and we needed to build the application in different ways. Then then weaknesses of our hand-rolled autobuilder became apparent and, over time, increasingly onerous. This disease has progressed now to the point where QA (who owns our build process) can't even maintain the autobuilder because it requires more and more programming skill. Every time we add a project or change something in an existing project, it consumes more developer time just to make it work. There have been days when we were unable to produce a build because the system was broken.
I'm now in a position where I can change this process, and I'm looking to scrap the entire system and put something else in it's place. My goals are:
Have an autobuild system that can run with zero human interaction at a specific time every day. It should be able to gather all the source code, compile all the apps, create the setups, put the finished products on a network share, and possibly trigger the automated testing system to kick in (we use QTP).
The autobuild system should be flexible enough to easily adapt to changes in the project without rrequiring a major overhaul.
It should be simple enough so that QA can own the system and not require developer resources to make changes to how builds are made.
What are your experiences? Can you recommend an autobuild system? Should I have different goals?
I'm currently using CruiseControl integrated with Ant to control project builds. This allows flexibility of build schedules and means you can automate the entire build process fairly easily using Ant scripts. Also, during defect fixing periods you can have CruiseControl set up to watch for source control submissions instead of time periods and build when these occur. This allows developers very quick feedback on defect fixes.
I use FinalBuilder and FinalBuilder Server for nightly builds. It's a bit buggy at times, but if you think it through it's quite easy to create extensible projects that can build X project type, build it's database from change scripts and deploy it to a testing server.
It can also handle all kinds of wierd and wonderful things like ZIPing a nightly build and uploading it to an FTP or creating ISO images automatically.
Definitely look into MSBuild if you're on the Microsoft stack.
Joel is always going on and on about how great FinalBuilder is, so that might be worth a look as well.
We just migrated from a hand-rolled set of Perl scripts to a Buildbot setup. I found it because that's what Google's using for Chrome.
You can do nightlies, or it can integrate with source control to do an isolated test build whenever anybody does a checkin, or a variety of other things. It's also parallel; you can have more than one machine in the build farm, either for specialized duties or just to handle more load.
The entire system is written in Python, so it's platform-agnostic, which is important if you need to do builds on more than one platform. It can do anything you can do from the command line; we have it calling MSBuild for user-mode components, a DDK build for kernel-mode pieces, and running products for unit test builds.
Out of the box it supports most OSS source control tools, but if you're using TFS or something else you may need to modify the package that you install on the slave machines.
I think you are on the right track here.
Whoever looks after your automated build process needs to have a fundamental understanding of how your solution fits together. This doesn't necessarily mean knowing how to write code or architect solutions, but they will require a solid understanding of how the solution compiles, packages itself etc.
You might need to share responsibility for builds between people or teams to accomplish this. I'd say that a daily build is a "team responsibility".
I'd look at establishing a baseline build configuration which can be extended for "special use" builds (besides just building a release version), e.g. internationalized releases, fxCop/Quality Tools config, build + run Unit Tests, continuous integration builds, a build config to run on developer workstations, etc.
Instead, I'd aim to achieve the following:
Automatic versioning, signing etc
Ability to produce verbose output (logging) to help debug build breaks
On that point - it should handle errors properly, capture as much information and log it properly
Consistency - It should work the same way each time to produce repeatable outcomes
Run in a clean, limited access environment
Well commented/documented so that it can be understood by new staff, etc.
Option to generate release notes, compile metrics, produce reports (if this option is available)
Ability to deploy to multiple environments
Support different ways to obtain source code from source control, e.g. by changeset, label, date, etc
As for tool recommendations, I've used FinalBuilder, Visual Build Pro, MSBuild/Team Build, nAnt, CruiseControl and CIFactory plus and good old fashioned batch files.
Each has its pros and cons, I'm not going to make a recommendation except to say that the products with decent UI support were a little bit easier to work with, but at times were far less powerful. If you're working with VIsual Studio, MSBuild is very powerful, but has a somewhat steep learning curve.
As of tools delivered with MS Visual Studio you might want to use MSBuild. Additional Community toolsets for MSBuild will even give you the possibility to checkout code from Subversion and zip output.
We're using it successfully in our company. Projects consists of several solutions with 100+ subprojects. Works like a charm.
Visual Build Pro is nice, if your build machines are Windows. I think this would fill the requirement you have about QA owning the system. But don't get me wrong, it's pretty powerful.
We use CruiseControl.NET and UppercuT (which uses NAnt) to do this. UppercuT uses conventions for building so it makes it really easy for someone to get started by answering three questions (What is the solution named? What is the path to source control? What is your company's name?) and you are building.
http://code.google.com/p/uppercut/
Some good explanations here: UppercuT
We use the Hudson buildbot for for big Java web app building from ant build scripts. Hudson is pretty sweet for our purposes. It has a master/slave setup so builds can be done concurrently (on a timer or on-demand). Slave nodes can be any OS/hardware combo provided it has the needed build tools already on it and is on the network (and won't crash every 10 min).
Full web-based interface including live console output, change logs, artifacts from the build are available across the network including previous builds (if successful). Awesomesauce!
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Closed 10 years ago.
I'm a college student and at any given time I have 4-5 programs I'm writing in various languages for various classes/projects.
At any given hour of the day I might be in the library, at home, in any of our different computer lab classrooms, etc.
Right now my current modus operandi is at the end of each class period or coding session, I gmail myself the current state of whatever I'm working on with an appropriate subject line (ie, "MIPS Assembly Lab 2, Revision #3").
However, this is becoming cumbersome and I'm looking for other solutions.
Restrictions:
No Thumbdrive. I'm about as absent minded as possible while still somehow managing to function. I'll lose it.
Portable or Web Apps only. I can't install non-portable executables. So, if a tool requires an installation wizard or administration privileges, I can't use it. I can use portable executables however, stored in our network drive space given to each student. So, that might open some possibilities.
I'm looking for some kind of online storage that I can easily download the latest files for my project or update those in the online storage, with as little friction as possible.
I've considered using some free version control repository and trying to find a portable executable or web-tool I can use to integrate with it, but I wonder if it might be overkill. I'm not really looking for keeping a revision history.
I've seen videos of things like dropbox and it seems like it is a step in the right direction.
Any suggestions?
A good solution would be to get an account at some hosting provider that offers shells (eg. Dreamhost) and do your work remotely. That way you always have a consistent environment that you can just ssh into from anywhere.
It's far easier to find a run-anywhere SSH client than a run-anywhere filesharing or revision control system.
www.github.com?
Git binaries should be usable without any installation process (I do not get the 'portable' part there, as you do not mention anything about your work environment).
Or, alternatively, a thumbdrive git repository, altough you said that you do not want to use a thumbdrive.
The most simple solution (if you can share the code with the world), is to create a project on Google code. This gives you a subversion repository plus a wiki to sort your ideas and an issue tracker for your TODO list, too.
Today, I prefer Subversion in your situation for two reasons:
There is a command line standalone client (just a couple of files which need no install) for Windows. Git would need either Cygwin or MinGW and a Unix environment of some kind. Too much hassle.
It's a bit more simple to use than Git. Git asks a paradigm shift from your brain and unless you get that right, Git will feel "weird".
For professional work on large projects, I prefer Git :)
CVS, Subversion and GIT all allow to create the repository on a network share. All of them discourage this because, in the case of a network outage, the repository may become corrupted.
So if you have frequent network outages, this might not be an option but frankly, most networks are pretty stable today. And in my 15 years since I use VCS, I never had one corrupt a repo on a share. Most network file systems will try their very best to commit pending writes, so unless the server completely dies, the data will be saved when the hiccup is over.
But if you're still worried, use git because it allows to restore the main repository with minimal data loss from your local copy (see this question for details).
We use CVSDude, who do CVS and SVN, it's a pay service $6/month = 250M, works really well, although maybe you're after something free?
You can get a free account on drivehq to store up to 1GB of data. Nothing fancy, but if you're looking for some place to put software it might do the trick.
You might like to check out Bespin:
Bespin is a Mozilla Labs experiment
that proposes an open, extensible
web-based framework for code editing.
I use Dreamhost's integrated SVN. They have an interface for setting up repositories and user accounts. I work on a mac which comes with SVN installed so the whole thing for me was completely painless. Couple of clicks, point SVN at my server and I was good to go.