I have been using open source source code versioning systems for a while now, and really like SVN.  Its easy to setup, easy to use from both Windows and Linux from the developer side through Tortoise SVN and Rapid SVN, and can be accessed through http, which is a big bonus in accessibility over CVS which I had used before.

I've also found myself very interested in what Trac provides as an open source code enhancement/bug/task tracking and ticketing system.  I have used Bugzilla before, but it didn't integrate with SVN to be able to browse source code and tie code changes to tickets, so I felt like I had two separate tools, which made it very easy for me to let Bugzilla get out of date because it was too much overhead to commit changes using SVN and entering the same change into Bugzilla.

What Trac allows is integrating with SVN, and SVN has hooks in the commit process that allow scripting to happen between Trac and SVN so that you can associate a code commit with a Trac ticket.  Absolutely perfect!

But I am a real small developer, I don't have my own server securely attached to the internet that I could modify the apache server configuration to allow SVN support over the web.  I use a hosting company, and hosting companies don't allow you to make those kind of changes.  But I have a great need to be able to collaborate with others, and I love what Trac and SVN together can provide.  What to do?

Then I came across Assembla.  They obviously have had this problem before as software developers, and decided to come up with a solution to it, and best of all, the free offering really supports most small developer teams.  They integrate SVN/Trac together to give you an SVN server over the web you can use.  They allow you to invite other members to your team that you can optionally configure to be private (which I always do).  For me, the Trac/SVN is enough, but they also throw in a Wiki to make it easy to write up documents to aid in development.  All of it is on the web, so there are no servers to maintain, and no remote access issues to figure out.

So now, I feel like I finally have a software development environment that allows me to be productive without needing to worry about setting up my own SVN/Trac server, and I also can collaborate with others very easily.  And all of it for free thanks to Assembla.