Can you help me start with version control systems?

Question

i'm new to the idea of VCSs and i was wondering if people here could help me have a better start at it. so far ive read about SVN and bazaar, tried tortoiseSVN with collabnet subversion edge, (just at home, used my pc as the server and laptop as the client), and tried bazaar with launchpad. and by tried i mean just checking out projects, editting a bit, checking how to update .. etc just the basic stuff. im doing this for a programming club we're doing at school so i guess what im asking now is, what do you think is better from ur experience? bazaar or svn? cuz the simple commands i tried don't rly show much of a difference, and the comaprisons i read were a bit confusing.

and another thing, do u think i should start with command line instead of GUIs? i used command line with bazaar, didn't find it so hard but was wondering why everone seems to use command line? how does it give more control?
Thanks in advance :)

Answer 1

For small/personal projects it is easier to get going with a distributed version control system like Bazaar because you don't need to go through the hassle of setting up a server, although having a second site backup of your repository is generally a good idea - I never want to loose the hard work I did.

GUI's often lag a bit behind in functionality and don't necessarily implement all the obscure command-line options, but in general it helps you to learn the main concept in a more intuitive manner - you can see all the buttons and click on them to see what happens :). So I think gui's are a bit better for learning. You can try BzrExplorer which I find very nice, although I prefer the eclipse qbzr plugin because I already work in the IDE, luckily they use the same dialogs.