How do I do source code management without version control tools?

Question

I work on a software project which has a suite of source code that undergoes periodic change. The code is typically promoted to a production environment, and development continues in a development environment. Emergency hotfixes in production need to be backported to development. A third environment for testing may also exist from time to time. Many developers work on this code at the same time, often needing to make changes to the same individual file.

In short, a classic use-case for version control software. Unfortunately, we have a stone age IT department, and we do all our development in a stock Windows XP environment with absolutely no possibility of using any other software without approval - which never happens. We are lucky to have Winzip.

So what's the best way of managing the above workflow without any real tools? At the moment we are just editing files on a Windows shared drive, making ad-hoc working copies into folders with names like "James's Copy of X", doing backups with Winzip, and calling across the room, "is anybody working on this file at the moment?"

Thanks, James

Edit: Some clarifications:

The irony is that the system is hardly locked down at all - I could download, install and configure TortoiseHg in about 7 minutes. But I need to do this by the book.

I am also actively pursuing getting version control software through official channels, but ETA for that is 6-9 months if ever, so I'm just trying to do the best I can with what I have now.

Finally, trust me, you will be reading about this project on TheDailyWTF one day, so please help me out with what I can do now rather than what management should have done last week.

Answer 1

Get source control. Talk to management, refuse to work, do whatever you can to get it in.

Bring in a netbook, install a SVN server and use that. Run Git off USB drives.

Really - anything.

It is not just an industry standard now - it is irresponsible of you and your management to continue working like this.

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After notifying management and explaining that this is an issue, if they do nothing, just let the inevitable happen. Something that shouldn't have been promoted to production will be (regression, bug, new feature, whatever). When they come to blame you, explain how source control can help ensure that such things do not happen again. Perhaps they will listen then.

Answer 2

Ok, two actual options occur to me here.

First. You have Winzip, and you appear to have web access since you're posting on Stack Overflow. Assuming you have the ability to upload files (which isn't a given, since you're still using a generic StackOverflow avatar) you could find - or build - an externally-hosted service that'll allow you to upload a ZIP file via a web browser, unzip it, and then commit the unzipped contents to a Git or Subversion repository. Stick a secure web front end on it (Apache + mod-dav-svn) and you'll have the ability to browse, review and commit changes to individual files. You won't get the benefits of local SVN/GIT capabilities like merging, but you'll have centralized project history. There could even be a quite lucrative business model in this - selling web-based SCM to developers who are stuck on IE6 and WinXP and can't install anything.

Second: You find a junior/admin in your IT team who's just as frustrated as you are at the draconian restrictions being enforced, persuade them that you know what you're doing, and get them to 'accidentally' set up a local administrator account on your workstation. WinXP is sufficiently insecure out of the box that this shouldn't be too hard to make this look like an accident.