[R] Which version control system to learn for managing R projects?

[Marc Schwartz]

On Oct 26, 2010, at 11:22 AM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:

> On 26/10/2010 12:16 PM, Tal Galili wrote:
>> Hello all,
>> 
>> I wish to learn a version control system for managing my R (data analysis)
>> projects.
>> 
>> I know of SVN and github, and wonder if there is any reason for which I
>> should prefer the one over the other (or any other platform). An example for
>> a reason could be if it will make it easier for me to later work with
>> R-forge or CRAN or any other platform for R code distribution.
> 
> R mainly uses svn so that might be an advantage.  On the other hand, git is newer and has some nice features.
> 
> Duncan Murdoch


Tal,

As Duncan notes, both R and R-Forge use svn, so that is something to consider for ease of interaction (more so with R-Forge, since R's svn is read only for us). I have used svn on both Linux and OSX for a number of years and it works well for me. There are also GUI's available for it (both stand alone applications and browser based) on the three common OS's, if you prefer that approach to using the CLI.

On the other hand, you are likely to get as many strong opinions on this question as you would if you had asked folks to name their preferred editor for R, even (especially?) if you limited the choices to Emacs and Vim...  ;-)

Regards,

Marc Schwartz