I frequently work together with colleagues on projects. To make it easy we create project folders (network drives) which contain all kind of information to the project. Often these are new product development projects. That means the project folder contains financial calculations, drawings in PDF format, excel sheets, images etc.
I was wondering what would be the best tool to track changes and notify me about changes in the project folder. I have little experience with SVN (which I think could probably do the job) and no experience with GIT (which I understand is superior).
There are a few caveats however:
- the data is non-public inside a corporate network. So resources like Github cannot be used due to confidentiality.
- we don't have admin permissions on our workstations, so installing something requiring those is not an option either
So basically, these are our requirements:
- files are stored in project folders on a central machine (not one of the workstations)
- we need to track changes in these directories, i.e. I need to be notified whenever content changes (the tool should e.g. periodically scan a certain folder)
- required "monitor" must be able to run without specific installation (e.g. "portable tools")
- the workstations run on Windows 7 OS
The files are stored on a file server, not a shared directory of one on the work stations. I was thinking about a tool running in the systray which notifies me (only myself) about changes to the project folder - if possible with changelog.
Is GIT the right way to do that or is it unnecessary complicated - or is it really just a tool to track changes in code?
What would be the best way (tool) to track changes and keep me informed?