topic Re: Anyone using Sub-version or CVS for version control of SAS code? in Administration and Deployment

Anyone using Sub-version or CVS for version control of SAS code?

wkossack_nspirehealth_com — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 19:10:52 GMT

I'm looking into bringing version control into our production sas enviornment.

Anyone have experiences with Sub-version or CVS? Or can anyone have experiences or recommendations of other version control software?

Re: Anyone using Sub-version or CVS for version control of SAS code?

SASKiwi — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 04:31:30 GMT

We use Microsoft's TFS (Team Foundation Server) for which the client software is Microsoft Visual Studio and found that it works very well for us. It has been easy to set up and to learn. Our Production SAS systems are exclusively developed in SAS code (not EG or DIS projects) so these are the artefacts under change control. If you are mainly a Windows SAS environment this is worth considering. Our main limitation at the moment is Production deployment is not automated, but we are planning to deal with this through some additional scripting.

Re: Anyone using Sub-version or CVS for version control of SAS code?

PaulHomes — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 03:39:56 GMT

I've used Subversion for managing changes to both SAS code and SAS deployment directory configuration files. I wouldn't recommend CVS - there are lots of better alternatives these days. For my own development I now use git, primarily for the benefits of offline commits etc. However, I'd probably still tend to recommend Subversion for version control at SAS sites due to it being a little simpler to understand and the wider availability of good GUI tools (including SAS Data Integration Studio support).

You might also be interested in reading a WUSS 2012 paper by Stephen Philp: An Introduction to Git Version Control for SAS Programmers

Re: Anyone using Sub-version or CVS for version control of SAS code?

Patrick — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 03:31:16 GMT

If you are using DI Studio then this link might be of interest for you: SAS(R) Data Integration Studio 4.3: User's Guide

Re: Anyone using Sub-version or CVS for version control of SAS code?

wkossack_nspirehealth_com — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 15:46:16 GMT

How about Vault by Source Gear? The software development group at my company uses it for application development (not SAS).

One thing I would like to have is the ability to run production reports from inside version control instead of from a separate location.

Re: Anyone using Sub-version or CVS for version control of SAS code?

wkossack_nspirehealth_com — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 16:03:31 GMT

DI looks interesting but it looks something like Enterprise Guide I'm not sure we need the extra expense. We are a small company so cost is important

Re: Anyone using Sub-version or CVS for version control of SAS code?

Patrick — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 11:53:31 GMT

DI Studio is SAS' tool for Data Integration. Very different from EG. But I'm not trying to sell you DI Studio and it's only worth it if you have serious Data Integration work to do.

I believe Paul Holmes has given you good advice.

Re: Anyone using Sub-version or CVS for version control of SAS code?

bentleyj1 — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 17:34:52 GMT

What operating system are you working in? I work in UNIX and would like to find a version control app that works with text files like SAS.

Re: Anyone using Sub-version or CVS for version control of SAS code?

wkossack_nspirehealth_com — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 17:39:33 GMT

I have not tried Subversion but it is supposed to be open source and available on windows and UNIX.

I'm working in a client sever install of SAS running on windows server 2003

Re: Anyone using Sub-version or CVS for version control of SAS code?

SASKiwi — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 19:03:21 GMT

I haven't used Subversion, but if your organisation has Microsoft's Visual Studio and TFS available then I would suggest you seriously consider it as set up and learning to use it is minimal.

Re: Anyone using Sub-version or CVS for version control of SAS code?

Tim_SAS — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 19:10:38 GMT

Subversion is expressly designed to do version control for text files. It is free and open source. There is almost certainly a binary package available for your particular flavor of Unix. There are many web pages and books available from which you can learn how to use it. See http://svnbook.red-bean.com/ for example.

Re: Anyone using Sub-version or CVS for version control of SAS code?

bentleyj1 — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 20:56:47 GMT

Thanks Tim. I'll do a google search. Because it's free we might be able to get it. :smileygrin:

Re: Anyone using Sub-version or CVS for version control of SAS code?

wkossack_nspirehealth_com — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:01:58 GMT

go for it

I'm going to start battling IT. They want me to use Vault. Anyone have an idea how much DI Studio is? I sent a query to SAS Sales but no response yet.

Re: Anyone using Sub-version or CVS for version control of SAS code?

SASKiwi — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 19:28:57 GMT

DI Studio is an enterprise data warehousing tool and unless you intend using it widely across your company it would be hard to justify the expense. We looked at it for our department's needs and concluded that BI Server was more than sufficient for our requirements.

Curious to know why you think Vault is not suitable. Going with what your company uses is not a bad option as long as it has the required functionality.

Re: Anyone using Sub-version or CVS for version control of SAS code?

Quentin — Wed, 11 Feb 2015 16:11:08 GMT

or others, I would be happy for more hints/tips on using Team Foundation Server (TFS) for SAS source code management.

I'm just about to start playing with it (don't have access yet). Happy to hear you endorse it, I was thinking it might be painful since the main client is Visual Studio.

Assume the simple case of a directory full of .sas files that want to have version controlled. Do you create a visual studio project that has links to those .sas files (and perhaps other file types, such as compiled formats and templates), and then do check-in and check-out through visual studio? Or does your SAS code end up living inside a Visual Project file (doesn't seem like that would really be an option)? Or do you perhaps use this TFS windows explorer extension to do check-in and check-outs, like you could with TortoiseSVN?

We will still be developing our code in DM SAS or EG or notepad or whatever, with .sas files sitting on a server. So curious at a simple level how much you have to change your work flow as a SAS developer to integrate with TFS.

Was at a SAS conference a while back and the pitch for TortoiseSVN was that from the SAS developer perspective, it made version control easy...

Thanks,

--Q.

Re: Anyone using Sub-version or CVS for version control of SAS code?

Quentin — Wed, 11 Feb 2015 16:29:53 GMT

Sorry, noticed this old question is officially marked assumed answered, so will start a new thread.

Re: Anyone using Sub-version or CVS for version control of SAS code?

TestingSAS — Thu, 06 Aug 2015 21:06:10 GMT

Hi Paul

is there a way to use git as a plugin in DI studio, SVN and CVS are built into DI but can I add Git as well.

thanks

Re: Anyone using Sub-version or CVS for version control of SAS code?

PaulHomes — Sat, 08 Aug 2015 10:03:04 GMT

There is an API available to write a DI Studio version control plug-in, but I'm not aware of anyone who has written one for git (perhaps someone else knows?). See the Prerequisites for Version Control section in the SAS Data Integration Studio 4.9: User's Guide:

If you want to use a version control server other than a CVS server or an SVN server, you must create a custom plug-in for that server. There is a documented application programming interface (API) to integrate other versioning systems with SAS Data Integration Studio. See this API documentation at http://support.sas.com/rnd/gendoc/versioncontrol/43/en/. Keep in mind that SAS Data Integration Studio uses only the first plug-in that it finds in the installation path. You must either name your custom plug-in a name that can be found before all other plug-ins, or you must remove other plug-ins from the installation path.

If you want integration within DI Studio this would be the way to go, but it is non-trivial (although SAS do provide sample code for SVN and CVS to help you get started). A simple (non-integrated) method would be to export SPK files from DI studio and check those into a git repository from the command line (or TortoiseGit on Windows).