Filed under: Friday Favorite
Friday Favorite: Coda + Versions + Beanstalk
Welcome to Friday Favorites! Every Friday, one of us will get all sloppy over an app, web service, or Mac feature that makes us grin like an idiot every time we use it. This week, Robert tells us about his favorite Web development tools.
It's no secret that I heart Coda. I've been in love with the one-window web development app since the day it came out. It turns out, though, that I was just scratching the surface of using Coda until I signed up for my new favorite web service: Beanstalk.
Beanstalk is a service that hosts your version control repositories remotely. This is great for far-flung team members with firewalls and other networking hurdles between them. Having a zero-configuration Subversion repository available no matter where you're working is hot stuff.
Best of all, Beanstalk publishes items committed to the repository to my team's development server automatically. It's just like it lives on our network.
To make Beanstalk work with Coda, I first had to check out a copy of the repository with Versions. Versions is still in beta (and Christina has written about it before), but its ease of use is unparalleled. In fact, it has Beanstalk in mind, with shortcuts to help you connect with your Beanstalk repositories.
With the repo downloaded, it's just a matter of setting it up as a site in Coda, and entering my username and password for Beanstalk. Coda does all the heavy lifting from then on. Committing changes and adding files is as easy as clicking an icon in the same position as if I was uploading it (and not using Subversion). I love that it keeps my muscle memory working for me, and not against me.
Coda is $99, Versions is free (while it's in beta), and Beanstalk starts at $15 per month (which is the plan I have). Put together, though, it's a million-dollar solution.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Tony Ward said 9:20AM on 10-24-2008
Seriously, kudos re: the artwork. That made my morning. =)
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Joshua said 9:33AM on 10-24-2008
Coda has built in SVN support.. why would you use Versions? The SVN support in Coda is extremely well done, I'm not really sure how I lived with out it (I have it setup to use Beanstalk also).. I used to try Versions and TortoiseSVN but Coda's implementation blows both of them away.
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Kyle Steed said 9:48AM on 10-24-2008
"Coda is $70" ... WHERE? I want that deal. Because when I go to the Panics site it still says $99 for CODA. So if you know of a deal going around, minus the discount you get for owning transmit, then I want in on it. Thanks.
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Robert Palmer said 10:20AM on 10-24-2008
You're right! It's $99, and $89 if you own Transmit 3. Sorry for the mistake. I've fixed the article.
sterling said 9:56AM on 10-24-2008
Beanstalk looks cool, but $15/month for subversion hosting seems pricy. You could probably purchase Warehouse and find hosting at a much cheaper price with much more storage.
Of course having a solution in place is worth the money to many people, just not me.
Regarding Coda's addition of Subversion support. Yeah, it's pretty sweet. I've been really impressed with it.
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Matt said 10:53AM on 10-24-2008
Warehouse is actually open source now...
http://github.com/entp/warehouse/tree/master
Tony said 11:16AM on 10-24-2008
Many hosting companies these days offer svn support...log in to the admin control panel, pick a directory to host your repository, and away you go...No extra charge. I bet a ton of people with hosting accounts don't even know they've got svn support baked right in.
Chris Coleman said 10:04AM on 10-24-2008
I've been using Coda since Day 1, but I just got started with Versions and svn this week. I'm still trying to work it into my workflow entirely, but I'm getting there. I think I'm getting to the point where I'm still not 100% familiar with the process, but I already can't live without it.
We now have a repository for work, but I've looked into Beanstalk for some of my own projects, but I didn't really know what the heck I was doing with svn. Now that I've learned the basics, I'll probably start paying for that Beanstalk account.
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Matt said 3:01PM on 1-20-2009
I haven't used beanstalk, however I've been using Springloops for several months now, with fantastic results.
http://www.springloops.com
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Eli said 11:12AM on 10-24-2008
You don't really need Versions to make the checkout. Just use Coda's built in SVN tools, and you are good to go.
Or do it via terminal that first time, and then let Coda do the rest of the work.
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Ian Beck said 11:12AM on 10-24-2008
Though it's a fantastic service, I don't use Beanstalk (why bother when my MediaTemple hosting has far more disk space than I'll ever approach using?), but I've added MAMP to the mix. The way I work is to create a working copy in my Documents folder with Versions where I track everything; the website, PSDs (which I often don't version), tags/snapshots, etc. Then I just check out the root of the site with Coda into my sites folder and use MAMP Pro to setup http://sitename:8888/ for local testing (if it's PHP; straight HTML I might just work out of the original working copy).
This works great because I get the more advanced SVN capabilities of Versions (timeline in particular) while still making use of the SVN capabilities of Coda in my update/publish workflow. The only downside is I have to remember to keep everything up to date if for whatever reason I save something to the non-Coda working copy, but this is just a matter of remembering to push the update button whenever I load up Versions.
Incidentally, for anyone out there who wants to use Coda's all-in-one sweetness, but can't stomach its sub-par text editing, I've developed a bundle of Applescripts to help make Coda better called the Textmate Emulation Applescripts for Coda:
http://beckism.com/tea_for_coda/
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Geoff said 12:02PM on 10-24-2008
I'd rather see Coda have built-in integration with Git and Github. THAT would be awesome. SVN is painful after getting used to Git.
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Drew said 1:14PM on 10-24-2008
I've found www.springloops.com to be much more reliable than beanstalk. Otherwise this is the exact setup I have. Cudos.
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andre said 1:18PM on 10-24-2008
Homer would never drool over those plants though :)
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mr. anyonmous said 1:27PM on 10-24-2008
Am using the exact same setup. And I love it!
Beanstalk + Twitter + Basecamp = unbelievably awesome.
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Jash Sayani said 4:20PM on 10-24-2008
I love Versions... Waiting for it to come out of Beta......
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Frank said 6:25PM on 10-27-2008
If you like Version you will love Cornerstone:
http://www.zennaware.com/cornerstone/
and it's already out of Beta.
if you're only looking for a SVN client that's the way to go in my opinion...
Otherwise, I agree with the article and really recommend Coda
Alex said 5:50PM on 10-24-2008
great article :) I just wish I had a web host with svn support.
a heads up to anyone with their own server, warehouse is a really cool subversion browser on rails: www.warehouseapp.com
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Tomson said 7:16AM on 10-25-2008
One more alternative to Beanstalk and Springloops: http://www.versionshelf.com/
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Rob Meidal said 7:48AM on 10-26-2008
I recommend Unfuddle. for subversion hosting. Their free account allows up to 200MB and comes with built in issue tracking. The interface is really nice as well. Check it out at http://unfuddle.com.
It also includes the up and coming GIT if you would like to check out the future of version control.
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