Tagging Releases in Source Control

A best practice when you’re using source control is to tag your releases.  What does this mean, exactly?  If you’re following the relatively standard non-distributed source control repository folder structure of having root folders for:

branches
tags
trunk

then it means simply making a copy of the current state of the system when you did your release.  Here’s how to do it using Subversion (SVN) and the TortoiseSVN client, both popular free tools for source control management.

Step 1: Test and Deploy Your Application

Do whatever it is you do to deploy your application.  Maybe you create an EXE package.  Maybe you FTP a web site to production.  Whatever it is, get your source code into the final state it needs to be in, and then do your deployment.

If the deployment doesn’t work, don’t go past this step.

Step 2: Tag Your Current Trunk

Assuming that you re deploying from the trunk of your source control repository, and that it’s your working copy (both relatively standard assumptions but certainly not 100% true for all shops) then the following steps should work for you.

First, go to the root of your working copy and select Branch/tag from the TortoiseSVN menu in Windows Explorer.

Read more: Steve Smith

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