Folder backups and revisions

Question

I'm creating a database program for drawings, but I am looking for a program that helps me to control the revisions and users of the documents.

For example, if one of my draftsmen has to make a revision to a drawing the program should book the file out in his name and lock the files and folders from revisions. The draftsman will then make the necessary revisions on his PC and when done copy this folder back to the server PC.

The program should then ask the draftman what revisions where made for logging purposes and also backup the files and folders that changed to an archival hard drive.

Can you recommend a program that does this?

Answer 1

This might be off topic but do you mean a version control system like Subversion or Git?

Answer 2

If I understand you correctly, then what you are looking for is called "version control" and there is a decent amount of software out there for exactly this purpose.

Of those I guess these are the most widely used ones:

• Git, has the advantage of "distributed" version control, so you don't really need a "server", but its concepts are harder to understand at the beginning.
• Apache Subversion, which is kind of a classic. It needs a central server that stores everything. I believe this is what you would use.

If you or the draftsmen are using Windows, there are GUI clients like TortoiseGit and TortoiseSVN, but if you say you're creating a database I guess you're programming, so you could of course just use the command line for Git or SVN, respectively.

What you can do with this kind of version control is exactly what you asked for, e.g. in SVN you can lock files and then release the lock when you commit them back to the server. When a revision is made, one specifies a "commit message" where they write what they changed.