What strategy do you use to sync your code when working from home

Question

At my work I currently have my development environment inside a Virtual Machine. When I need to do work from home I copy my VM and any databases I need onto a laptop drive sized external USB drive. After about 10 minutes of copying I put the drive in my pocket and head home, copy back the VM and databases onto my personal computer and I'm ready to work. I follow the same steps to take the work back with me.

So if I count the total amount of time I spend waiting around for files to finish copying in order for me to take work home and bring it back again, it comes to around 40 minutes! I do have a VPN connection to my work from home (providing the internet is up at both sites) and a decent internet speed (8mbits down/?up) but I find Remote Desktoping into my work machine laggy enough for me to want to work on my VM directly.

So in looking at what other options I have or how I could improve my existing option I'm interested in what strategy you use or recommend to do work at home and keeping your code/environment in sync.

EDIT: I'd prefer an option where I don't have to commit my changes into version control before I leave work - as I like to make meaningful descriptive comments in my commits, committing would take longer than just copying my VM onto a portable drive! lol Also I'd prefer a solution where my dev environment stays in sync too. Having said that I'm still very interested in your own solutions even if they don't exactly solve my problem as best as I'd like. :)

Answer 1

A Distributed / Decentralized Version Control System solution will suit your needs, Git, Bazaar, Mercurial, darcs... you have plenty alternatives.

Answer 2

Use a version control software like SVN, SourceOffSite, etc. You just have to check-in all your changes and get the latest changes when you want to sync.

Or you can use Windows Live Sync -> https://sync.live.com/foldersharetolivesync.aspx

Answer 3

Hasn't anyone recommended rsync? Use an rsync client to send the diff between files. You can apply these diffs thus bringing your file up-to-date. For the smallest file transfer it's probably the best idea.