Development setup in a company with external developers

Question

EDIT: This is about where the users will have their files, and TEST their changes - a development server so they can edit, save and then refresh a page to see whats changed.

I am currently looking over our systems we have in place, here we have 2 internal developers, and 2 designers. All 4 used the same server for development work with their own enviroments and databases and code all housed in an external SVN repo, this works pretty sweet however we are looking at opening up this server for external staff.

We have 2 external designers who we'd like to be able to edit files/insert designs etc etc. One runs a mac, other windows - ideally we'd like to open up access to our development server but one of these users it outside the country so access would be slow for anything other than something which runs in terminal however they use graphical IDEs.

Do anyone have any experience/how their companies handle doing this? Not really keen on FTP to upload, check, edit, upload, check etc

• Display Name: did you think about git or mercury repository?
• Steven Evers: You should probably clarify what you're asking for. It sounds to me that you're wondering if there is a different way to allow people to work on an RDP connection. From what I'm seeing, others seem to read that you're asking for info on what VCS to use. The answer may very well be using a DVCS, but I suspect there's a specific reason that you're using RDP now instead.
• iteratingself: ssh and vpn to the local network.

Answer 1

Easiest solution, at least for now, would be to just open of SVN to your external developers.

SVN is pretty disconnected workflow-wise, so the person on the slow connection should not have that much trouble outside of direct file transfers. Presuming they have decent internet access that should not be horrible -- I've worked on a few remote projects over SVN, and work on the office one remotely all the time and I've got no complaints.

So, you have what you need in place, just poke some holes in the firewall.

Answer 2

I would look into setting up a DSC (distributed source control) solution with secure access via SSH.

Examples include Git, Mercurial, and Bazaar. There's a bit of a learning curve for newbies but it's worth putting in a few hours to understand the principles and basics. There are also GUI front-ends available.

• mattnz: Git has a very nice interface to SVN, so the external user can use GIT locally and sync with SVN as needed.