I work for a small company with about 15 developers who work concurrently on
about 10+ projects both in new development and support.
We do custom software for manufacturing and production systems.  Part of our
contracts with our customers is a perpetual single use license of the source
code at each facility.
So we have a copy of the source on our office server, and another copy at each
customer site.  When we had only 5 developers it was easier to handle.  Now that
we are growing we need a source control system and I have been looking heavily
into Git.  Our old workflow does not seem that it will fit well with Git
however, but I feel that I need a distributed system to keep track of the office
version and the on-site versions of our source since development is taking place
on both.
(Some customers also have separate development, and testing versions on their
servers as well.)

I have created git repositories on a couple of our project source directories as
test beds.  Right now (second day) I am the only one who is actually using git.
 Everyone else is simply accessing the files on the server as they have always
done, and I am making the commits when I see signifigant changes. 

My question is really a request for modified workflow ideas.  My plan was to
have a master repository in our office server with clones at each customer site,
and multiple branches for test, QA, and production versions of the source.
Since most of these customers have closed networks, we would rely on people
traveling onsite, or emailing patches to get any updates back into our office
repository. 

Thank you for any assistance for this revision control newb.

Roger Garvin

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The workflow elements you mention so far sound sane to me:

* a repository in your office
* repositories at customer sites
* emailing patches when direct connections are not possible
* test and dev branches for each customer

I presume there will also be a production branch in customer 
repositories on which you arrange production releases... or maybe you 
just tag your test branch when it passes?

When you send patches via email, keep in mind that you'll have to convey 
which branch they belong on "out of band", for example after the commit 
message and above the diffstat.

There was an interesting discussion about maintaining per-client code on 
different branches recently, but I can't find it.

I've found Git to be very flexible.  Maybe you could start by emulating 
your current workflow and refine it as you go?  If you find you don't 
know how code travels currently... well, maybe you can just let your 
team pass patches around until patterns emerge.

Marcel
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Here's the broader thread:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/113278

This is an abridged summary:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/110697

And this a nice explanation referenced by the summary:
http://gitster.livejournal.com/26540.html

Marcel

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We've done a ton of that. Even better than emailing is that you can
have a repo on a usb stick/disk.

 - At the office, update it from the 'office' repository.
 - At the client site, pull updates from the usb stick, and push any
code developed at teh client side to the stick
 - Back at the office, push to the office repo

cheers,



m
-- 
 martin.langhoff@gmail.com
 martin@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
 - ask interesting questions
 - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
 - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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