Comments for blog.limedaley.com/post/version-control-comparison

Comment #180

2009-03-27T14:16:49Z

I agree that the tortoise gui is not any good.

I've heard good things about Eclipse's integration, and also integration into VC6. I haven't heard if there is any integration into the newer Microsoft compilers.

SmartSVN and another one (FastSVN?) both look good, but are standalone clients.

For me, I am on a command line all day long, so not using a gui doesn't bother me, and I actually prefer it, since it is so much faster than requiring a mouse, etc.

I value stability over a gui, so VSS is definitely out, in favor of any other source control software I've ever used. True, it doesn't fail often, but once every two or three years is enough for me to never want to use it again. And I've only used it for small teams (3-4 people), I have to assume it fails more often with more checkins - ie. the fail rate can actually be calculated per-checkin or per-byte, rather than per-day.

Comment #179

2009-03-27T11:26:27Z

The lack of any good IDE integration (other than Java IDEs) and the fact that everyone recommends those disgusting Explorer extensions (which slow it down and are often the source of instability) pretty much rules Subversion out to me. I'll stay on Visual SourceSafe, thank you.

Ankh is not good enough. They can bash VSS all they want, but at least it knows how to work with an IDE. It's not 1985 anymore. IDE integration is pretty compulsory, and should be evident with 99.99% of commervial source control systems providing it.

A lot of the Open Source VCS developers have the mindset of anything is better than nothing, and it just doesn't fly to a lot of Windows developers. I want to right click on a file in my IDE project manager to "Commit", not open another explorer Window to do the same thing. That is [obviously] far less productive.

Comment #178

2009-01-20T07:19:58Z

Hi I run test director setup.after that i run http://abc/TDBIN/start_a.htm but the page shows Download Test Run scheduler in Progress.... & Download Execution Flow in Progress....I have already tried directory security page for permission but to no effect.Kindly,help me out it is very urgent.Thanks a Lot

Comment #177

2009-01-10T05:23:38Z

You don't need anything fancy to do notifications - simple use the supplied scripts in the "hooks" directory. You can get as fancy as you would like. For windows, you use the post-commit.bat (or post-commit.exe) file. If you don't have an email program handy for windows, I have used blat.exe before, and that has worked well.

I have only used the post-commit hook, and mostly, I am using the default script (on Linux), but I did make a modification or two. Mostly, the emails on commit just need to go to myself, but one tree I also send to someone else.

#!/bin/sh

REPOS="$1"

REV="$2"

FROM="--from svn@xxx.com"

get top-level directory being worked on

DIR=`svnlook dirs-changed "$REPOS" --revision "$REV" | cut -f1 -d/ | sort -u`

if [ "x$DIR" == "xblogfuse" ] ; then

TO="xxx@gmail.com svn@xxx.com"

else

TO="svn@xxx.com"

/usr/lib/subversion/hook-scripts/commit-email.pl "$REPOS" "$REV" $FROM $TO >> post-commit.log 2>&1

Comment #176

2009-01-10T03:05:34Z

I have been evaluating the SCM s for last month.

I needed a low cost feature packed SCM tool.

I guess i was competing against Perforce.

CVS the old workhorse...is a proven thing, but requires a lot of effort on developers to merge and remove conflicts... branch merges are a pain.

it doesnot do binary diff.

I tried Subversion recently.

server installation is quite easy....I picked visualSVN for server and tortoiseSVN for client.

all goes in well. i can tag , branch diff....

but my problem starts when i need to have a perforce/TFS kind of feature to notify when the checkin , merge etc happen..

I looked upon google....found subversionnotify.com

downloaded the plugin, it is not clear how to make it work...

anyone who worked on it....lend me experiences....

hope to hear soon

Comment #175

2008-10-22T15:47:08Z

I think "slightly improved" is an exaggeration, either because you are trying to sell Perforce, or you haven't used SVN in the last 10 years.

Additionally, I have only used the newest release (1.5) a bit, but it makes branching even smarter than it already was, primarily, you can now merge branches from either direction multiple times, and subversion will not merge the same change twice.

Comment #174

2008-10-14T19:47:47Z

I have used SVN, Perforce, Clearcase, CVS, and a few other SCM products in my time as a software engineer.

Out of all the SCM products available, I prefer Perforce. It's easy to setup, easy to deploy, and the inter-branch file histories really help when you need to merge between one branch and another. It works well. The licensing is a little pricey, but perforce has never failed me.

by comparison, SVN is just a slightly improved version of CVS which doesn't say anything postive about the SCM. If you have really simplistic development demands, then I guess can work for you. But once you have to deal with more than a handful of developers, or when the requirements demand multiple branches, I highly recommend moving away from SVN and CVS. Merging branches with these products has been a horrible experience.

Comment #173

2008-03-25T20:48:01Z

I forget how many years I have been using subversion (4?), but I would still pick it above all of the others that I have used. I am not sure how much subversion would have to cost before I would go with something else.

Comment #172

2008-03-25T19:03:08Z

Jon, I found this blog to be very helpful. Like many others here, we too are looking for good version/revision control software. We don't mind the cost, just want something that will work well. It would be for a new development environment, so there are virtually no limitations, other than it must have a GUI. I personally only have experience with Micro$oft VSS. I liked it, but didn't like the way its database was laid out.

Not really looking for answers here, just wanted to say thanks for posting your experience! I think I've narrowed it down to Subversion, VSS and perforce (Still need to figure out what perforce is!)

Comment #171

2008-01-14T03:27:26Z

I haven't found a very good GUI for subversion. I just use the command line, but I would recommend tortoise, as the best free solution. My only complaint with it is that it slows down explorer noticeably, so I uninstalled it, since it annoyed me too much. The developers don't seem to notice it, and suggest various things to the people who complain about it, but the last version I tried, it was still happening. I think the explorer plugins are hard to get right, and not slow down stuff. Winzip is annoying in that way too.

I forget the name of a commercial solution, either SmartSVN or FastSVN or something like that. I haven't used it myself, but watched some people, and it looked pretty good.

Comment #170

2008-01-14T03:16:27Z

Well ... git is linux only and its a distributed system like Bitkeeper. We were after a cross platform, client/server system with good GUI tools + SCC integration on the client end, so for us git doesn't fit the bill.

We found a way around the shared files problem - we'll just bundle everything into one repository and use the directory structure to seperate projects. We now have the problem that the free UI tools that come with SVN are pretty poor when it comes to labelling (or tagging as they call it) compared to PVCS. It does seem there's no ready-fit solution in open-source land I'm afraid :\

Comment #169

2008-01-03T15:51:50Z

Yes, we took the plunge and moved all of the shared files to directories, or else changed the include paths to include the directory where the file is.

After we did that it turned out that due to the svn:external tag not working across branches (that'd be a trick - to have the svn:external magically change when you create a branch.

I don't know anything about the "new" tool that the linux kernel folks are using: git. I'd take some time to check that out. If you do that, and take the time to write up a paragraph or two, I can add it to the top of this page for the future.

Comment #168

2008-01-03T00:49:29Z

My company is looking to move from PVCS, however I'm having a lot of difficulty identifying a suitable replacement.

We have multiple projects with hundreds of source files in each, with several instances of header files shared between projects. The sharing alone rules out subversion (it makes me shudder to think of restructuring everything into directories). PVCS has been reliable for us, but horrendously slow when it comes to doing large scale checkouts or labels.

Can anyone suggest a system that handles shared files and is as fast & reliable as SVN?

Comment #167

2007-12-05T22:16:46Z

As you might expect, I'd recommend subversion over cvs. I wonder if the CVS authors have any reasons why you should use cvs over subversion? Maybe for really small, one directory projects, you don't need the overhead of the subversion database, etc.

PVCS is designed to be a gui for CVS, right - so most of the features are the same. I'd expect that cvs has to be faster than PVCS, at least faster than all versions prior to 8.0, and newer versions than 8.0 if you aren't using split archives.

Neither can handle files moving from one directory to another. I am not sure if CVS can handle file renames, PVCS cannot.

If you are willing to live without the history stored in PVCS, and start fresh with your CVS and/or subversion, you will save yourself a lot of trouble. PVCS's command line scripts have some quirkiness with spaces and escaping backslashes, etc. which will waste some of your time as you work through those bugs.

I haven't used cvs on larger projects, so I can't comment much more than that. subversion was originally designed to be a drop-in replacement for cvs, but fixing the half dozen things that were annoying in CVS.

Comment #166

2007-12-03T07:29:27Z

Hi All,

Presently we are using PVCS as version control tool. But here problem is we have only 2 userids to use pvcs for my team, as licence cost has to pay for evrey user.

Now my company wants to use CVS as it is open source, so any one can explian proc and cons based on below information.

There are multiple teams supposed to use, every developer supposed to have a userid.
What are the pitfalls of CVS?.
Compare to PVCS how it is better and worse?
what is the approach to implement CVS for my project, how to start implementaion and pre requisites?
Pls sned me if any one haveing slie show on CVS how it works etc...
if any issues comes whom to approach, possible way to solve those issues?

I am greatful if any one help me out in this regard..thanks in advance..

Ananth.

Comment #165

2007-11-22T14:49:07Z

Srini: I see other folks have asked if you work for Accurev, but you said that you don't... I guess you just really, really like their software to post on so many different blogs and web pages about their product.

You should probably explain who you are in your posts.

I did see your various troubles in configuring ClearCase, which probably influences your decision somewhat.

For me, I have found subversion to be excellent, and so after three or four years, or whatever it has been, I continue to think subversion is the best one out there. I look forward to the next release that will handle merges even better than it already does.

I introduced subversion at my previous company, and while there was some resistance to the change, everyone is now used to it, and going full steam ahead.

Comment #164

2007-11-20T17:42:17Z

I see someone mentioned Accurev above. Based on my experience you would be hard pressed to find a better tool that is as stable and easy to administer as it is elegant and powerful. The price isn't too bad either, but you get a whole lot more with it than you would with older file-based branch and label tools. Check out its stream concept sometime.

http://www.cmcrossroads.com/product-reviews/product-reviews/accurev--4.5-%11-the-next-generation-in-scm.html

http://www.cmcrossroads.com/option,com_smf/Itemid,177/topic,70170.0.html

Good luck to all of us!

Srini

Comment #163

2007-07-16T16:20:04Z

I have only used versions up to 8.0.2.3, so it is possible that they now support it.

I talked to their second-tier support (I think only one of the original three people who actually know the product are left) they said that I was getting such huge archive files because PVCS didn't support unicode, and it wouldn't do diffs on the files, because of the file extension was .keyfile, but if I manually told it to do diffs by adding that extension, it would keep the archive files smaller. So, I added .keyfile to the list of diffable outputs, and the archive files stayed smaller, but the diff tool could not output any useful diffs, and just reported that it was a binary file, and couldn't show me a diff. So, that is what I mean when I say they don't support unicode. The files check in and out fine, and you can get old revisions, etc. It behaves exactly the way you would expect it to treat a .jpg, ie. no diffs.

I can't remember if the large archive problem was before or after the upgrade to 8.0 (and the associated splitting of the archives), so perhaps in the new scheme, the archive file doesn't double in size on each commit, but certainly it still doesn't diff the unicode file.

For what it is worth, we now use TortoiseSVN as the client for subversion, and TortoiseMerge doesn't understand unicode either, but you can tell it to use WinMerge for .keyfile files, and then it works, though when there are conflicts, there tends to be trouble (strange binary characters show up in the file, rather than the conflict markers - haven't investigated that enough yet, most of our files aren't unicode, so it hasn't been enough of an issue to worry about.

Comment #162

2007-07-13T17:15:50Z

Good post...quite useful...thank you...

Quick question:

You have mentioned that PVCS doesn't support unicode; but on the contrary Serena support team is saying they do support it;

I am unsure whom to believe; could you pls explain your position.

Thanks

Comment #161

2007-03-08T17:20:20Z

I think mostly you should read the stuff I already wrote, did you do that?

I think you should consider open source products as well - is there a reason you didn't list them?

Did Serena change their product name yet again? They sure have a strange business model. They historically have not been able to support their products well when they switched from completely different products every year or two. Their first level support were completely useless, and you always had to get to one of three people who actually knew the product better than I did. We have left Serena's software for our new products, and are only using it for the old products until they die off.

Serena's product certainly do not deserve to be compared to your upper-end products. I have heard very good things about Bitkeeper, since the author stole the application from Sun (I think that is the company, haven't thought about it in a long time) when he worked there. If we could just convince Sun to open source/release their internal software, we would all do really well. They have not done that, I am not sure why - they should at least sell it, if they aren't willing to give it away. I haven't ever met anyone who has used it who would ever use anything else.

Comment #160

2007-03-07T15:17:37Z

Hi.

I`m software consultant and I´m making an evaluation of a software of version control. Which of the following softwares has a better operation?

******Products from $200-500 per license******

CS-RCS Pro

Vault

CS-RCS Browser

Team Coherence Pro

Visual SourceSafe

*****Products ranging from $500 - $1000 per license*****************

Evolution

SurroundSCM

Team Coherence Enterprise

Firefly

Borland Starteam

Perforce

SpectrumSCM

Accurev Pro

*********Products over $1000 per license*******

Razor

Borland Starteam Enterprise

Bitkeeper

Accurev Enterprise

Serena Changeman Pro

How is the products SERENA?.

Do you can help me?

Comment #159

2007-03-07T11:33:58Z

I would definitely choose svn over CVS. I don't know of any reason to use CVS - maybe if you were the only developer using it, you might pick CVS - though I use subversion on projects where I am the only developer.

I don't know what IS is. I have heard people say VSS is good for small projects, under a gig or two in one database. I think Microsoft says no more than 4 gigs.

My full-time company is switching to subversion right now. RapidSVN, one of the GUI clients for subversion is not as good as I thought it would be. The command line is the best, followed by Tortoise.

Comment #158

2007-03-07T09:51:46Z

I would like to know which management tool is better,IS VSS or CVS?

Comment #157

2006-05-16T14:49:24Z

Hey,
I've used cvs, vss, rational clearcase (blurcase), subversion and now pvcs. Subversion is by far the best, unless you have some immutable business hurdle. I've used trac.edgewall.com which is an integrated project tool on subversion and really fantastic, if it suites your dev team. I've insisted on a developement wiki in every company since using trac.
I'm a firm believer in not locking files since using cvs. Locking files is very old school and it does serialize some dev tasks. Generally developers working on different tasks, who do need to edit the same file, edit different parts of that file, so the merge is trivial and automatic. Day to day, I've very very rarely had a conflicting merge on commit/check in, and those times I knew it would happen (no surprises), and still chose not to lock the file(s).

If you can trial trac and subversion, its worth it just for the mind opening it does.

Cheers,
Ianni

Comment #156

2006-02-16T14:16:10Z

I have now used Subversion pretty extensively, and have been quite impressed with its merging capabilities. The only downside that I know of is that you have to get used to the model of not exclusively checking out each file, but it does such a good job of merging, that it overcomes that quite easily.

I believe that it now supports exclusive lock mode, but it is so great to not use it any more.

Comment #155

2006-02-16T12:44:17Z

Oh, Yore Version Control is at http://www.pcprogramming.com

Comment #154

2006-02-16T12:41:00Z

If anyone has the time I would really appreciate a review of Yore Version Control. It's in first release (1.0), so I'm sure there are still plenty of areas of opportunity. What I need right now is feedback in terms of what needs to be changed, and what needs to be added. All comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Comment #153

2005-04-08T15:27:25Z

Tracker's cost is approximately half of Version Manager, although really you don't buy them separately, but instead buy Professional, which include Build (I think there is a new name for it, we haven't used Build yet).

We also don't use the TrackerLink stuff, it looks like it is a pain to me.

I do know TrackerLink is supposed to be able to work with SourceSafe as well.

(I am in the middle of trying to get Tracker to speed up, and having a reasonable amount of success, although I keep getting directed to non-US support centers, where the people can hardly speak English, so it is making the process more frustrating than it should be).

I use Mantis for a project, and I think as long as there is someone who could work on customizing it, you could get it working well, although not the linkage part.

I also looked at Bugzilla, but thought it was too techy for our users to comfortably use. It is also more aimed at email use, rather than a direct client.

Comment #152

2005-04-08T15:15:11Z

Hi - I am just starting to go thru a similiar evaluation with a slightly different slant. I am starting a support org for a small company and am looking into defect tracking software. We already have PVCS, although its not 'too late' to do something about that, it would just take some very good justification since we already paid for it. What I want most out of the defect tracking software is good linkage to the code control, eg. in support I should be able to look at a defect and see what code changes were made to fix it. Also for building isolated fixes its nice to know you just need to pick up certain modules rather then an entire build in some cases.

Anyway, I am looking at Tracker for PVCS, but heard its very expensive(almost twice PVCS cost). Was wondering if anyone else had any recommendations in this area, eg. I do not see any other change tool interfacing with PVCS(and I do not even like the way Tracker does it, it seems backwards, eg. you link from PVCS to the defect rather then the other way around). I am also looking at Bugzilla with CVS, but that may be too limited for our use.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

Comment #151

2005-03-23T20:02:53Z

It is scary to think about not using any version control software...

    We have continued use of PVCS, though we are six months away from having to plunk down the annual support costs, so we need to think about things again.  It is hard to switch apps, since the users get used to the deficiencies, and don't want to learn new ones.
    If I were starting out fresh, I would use subversion.  I use that for a couple projects, both by myself, and with a handful of people (and I hear it works fine with large numbers of users as well).
    The admin is easy.  There is a windows GUI integration tool, to make people happy (PVCS does not have one; the one they do have only works within Visual Studio if you are only trying to open up one project database at a time).
    Subversion doesn't allow cross project sharing of files, at least not easily.  That is the biggest (only?) reason for us to not use it.  To use it, we would need to restructure our development directories, and people would not like that.

Comment #150

2005-03-23T19:50:06Z

Jon,

What's the latest on your PVCS woes? We are considering bringing it in to use for our first version control system (we currently rely on good hygiene only).

-Rick

Comment #149

2004-12-30T15:10:00Z

Yah, I get the impression that PVCS really sucks. CVS is useful to understand the concepts of versioning, but something more full featured, and at least partially functional is best. Perforce is used by hardcore facilities, CVS is used to get the jobs done.

Comment #148

2004-12-08T15:26:13Z

An update on SourceOffSite -- it continues to crash about once a week. Restarting the server always fixes it, but you have to be an admin to restart the service, so I get a phone call a week to fix it.

I hear other people don't have this problem, so it might somehow be a problem with our machine, but the machine hardly gets used, so I wouldn't think that we are being all that hard on the system.

Comment #147

2004-12-08T15:23:26Z

I hadn't realized that I hadn't ever updated this post. The consultant came out to help us get set up. He was two hours late, but was only planning on staying until 4:00 or so, so he ended up only being here for a couple hours. We got a couple questions answered, but mostly the conclusion is, it is really hard to set up PVCS, and you have to have someone become an expert at it before you can even hope to get it set up correctly.

The consultant failed to get his demo to work in a number of different ways, even though his demo is a vmware/completely sanitized version of everything, so you would expect everything to work perfectly.

He did quit his job two days later, so perhaps he was a bad example of Serena's support.

We ended up buying it anyway, since it is arguably a bigger pain to switch to someone else, and we have already invested so much time in Serena's products.

There are a number of bugs that they don't tell you about until you call up their support line, so my boss has told me to call support every time there is a hint of anything, since we are paying for support, and we have wasted so much time on their products.

The trick is to get past their first tier of support, where the people don't really know anything, and talk to you for ten minutes trying to find keywords in the knowlege base. I have had their first level of support say a couple times, "well, if what you say is true, than I have been telling customers incorrect information for years".

Eventually, I step them through the bug and they admit that they had no idea it worked like that, and promise to talk to a developer and get back to me, but so far no one has ever called back.

I did see one of my bugs actually get entered (I think), but it still hasn't been fixed. Serena recommends not using their latest release or the previous release due to bugs, but to go back two releases to get a more stable version. Sounds like they need a quality assurance team or something...

The sales guy who helped me out through the whole process (as well as getting me the names of the so-called tier 2 support) said he liked my marketing quote:

Serena: we suck the least.

As it seems that all version manager tools really don't work all that well, so you just have to get used to the bugs, and figure out ways to workaround them.

Comment #146

2004-10-18T19:27:45Z

Serena says that sometimes it takes 2-5 day "engagements" of their tech support coming on-site to figure out how to upgrade their software.

They are sending a guy on Wednesday to see what he can figure out. I guess I am not holding my breath, but it would be nice if they get it working, and this silly version control software search can be over.

BitKeeper hasn't gotten back to me. My guess is that our company is too small for them to deal with.