Quote Originally Posted by Higuy View Post
I've been toying around with the idea of getting a server for upcoming projects, to stop the hassle of having to personally give out files and builds of projects.

I'd like to know, does anyone have any experience working with a server/SVN? What kind of computer components should I be getting/creating for this kind of job, and what kind of settings should the computer have once I get it?
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First off, there are better alternatives to SVN. Git and Mercurial being two common ones.

What type of content are you planning on versioning? If you're only dealing with text then either will work fine. If you're planning on versioning binary data (for example, Halo Maps and/or PSDs/.max files) you'll want to stick with Mercurial since there are plugins which help keep disk usage in check. Versioning binary data is generally a bitch no matter what though.

In terms of hardware, you're really not going to need too much. Your ISP is going to be your main bottleneck, and after that I/O. So go for 7200RPM drives or if you're feeling rich, some SSDs.

In terms of software, it depends on what exactly you want to do. Version Control is a good idea and for the most part you can run SVN, Mercurial or Git out of Apache or Nginx. You'll probably want to stick with some variant of Linux (Ubuntu Server or Fedora being a good starting point) but if you want to spend the money you could get a copy of Win7 Pro/Ultimate or Windows Server. If you have an .edu email address you should be able to get a free copy of Windows Server here.

Another thing you might want to look into is Continuous Integration. I've mainly seen this done in the context of building source code but there's no reason why you couldn't throw together a couple of scripts which compile map content and then package it up into a zip file or something.