Easiest was to share group project code written in MatLab

Question

We are working on a group project written in MatLab. We all need to be able to access and write the same program, sometime simultaneously. We are working on a scientific Linux distribution. We are all physicists so we would rather find a very simple - ideally GUI, solution.

It sounds like GitHub would enable us to write simultaneously and merge mismatched code but it seems so complicated. We don't really understand the push/pull/fork/commit terminology and we would rather not study it if there is an easier option.

What is the path of least resistance for a group project in Matlab?

Answer 1

I regularly use Subversion for group MATLAB projects. It has what I find a slightly simpler workflow than Git/GitHub.

The latest versions of MATLAB integrate directly with Subversion, so you can check things in and out directly from within the MATLAB workspace. Alternatively you can use TortoiseSVN, which integrates within Windows Explorer (I believe there is an equivalent for Linux as well).

However, I'll speak bluntly - Git and GitHub are really not that hard, and I'm pretty sure that anyone who's clever enough to be a physicist working with MATLAB is clever enough to understand them as well. Although Subversion is a bit simpler to learn, Git and GitHub have a lot of advantages, they integrate well with many other services, and they're just overall kind of better. The latest versions of MATLAB integrate directly with them in the same way as with Subversion.