Workflows and possible solutions for dreamweaver users

[Infrid]

Hi all,

We are web developers and I'm struggling to find a solution to a
work-flow problem. We are going to use a version control system, I'm
incline to use mercurial of course.

I'm in charge to find a solution for this situation because I'm the only
who has enough gnu/Linux skills, and can configure an old computer in
the office for this task.

My co-workers work-flow
=======================

They use dreamweaver for editing PHP files in a live environment (I know
is a bad practice) in this way:

1. From a menu they "open" the web site location, dreamveawer knows
where the files are on the net.

2. They navigate in the file system end select the file for edit

3. dreamweaver actually download the file and it puts in a directory
following the remote paths. Example: if you edit ~/dira/dirb/file.txt it
create the path under c:\myWeb\dira\dirb\file.txt

4. When they save, dreamweaver write the local file and uploads it to
the remote location.

In the end you have a partial copy of the web site on your hard drive.
In the past (in another office) they used svn for version control
system, they commits the changes to the local copy and transmits the
modified files to the svn server. I've never use svn, excuse me for the
incorrect terminology.

Problems
========

We must use some kind of revision control system, my co-workers
overwrite files each others sometimes, we have backups but it's a
wasting time to recover the right file.

I can't put any kind of file/directory related to a revision control
system in the remote server, no .hg for quick deploy or similar. They
use the editor for "synchronize" the local files to the remote ones.

Have a development copy of the web site is not possible at the moment.

As you realized, they use a windows system, I'm a gnu/Linux and Emacs user.

Possible solution
=================

It's relatively easy to have a repository on the working copy, we can
commit and push changes to the "master/central" repository. In this case
I think to write some elisp code for Emacs, but I would take a solution
that is editor agnostic.

In an another scenario I can configure/extend mercurial to upload the
modified files every time I save in my local repository, I like the idea
to resolve this problem with tools provided from hg instead to write
some custom bash script to call every time by hand.

We are not a big team, 4 people in total. Have a "central" repository is
for having an updated copy pulled from the server every time I start to
work.

Which approach should i take? Suggestions? You can suggest a totally
different work-flow but my co-workers wouldn't change their habits.

Thanks
- GC