Re: Thoughts on choosing a source code control system?
Re: Thoughts on choosing a source code control system?
- Subject: Re: Thoughts on choosing a source code control system?
- From: Miguel Arroz <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 01:24:35 +0000
Hi!
I could never use CVS decently, I really hated all its defects and
limitations.
I use SVN for almost all my projects now, and I don't think it's
perfect, but it's very very good, and MUCH better than CVS. It has
some shortcoming, namely:
- The .svn files information is stored in every subdirectory in
the project. So, for example, is you store a Keynote file on SVN,
every time you "save" the document on Keynote, Keynote will remove
the old package and create a new one, destroying the .svn info and
screwing everything up. Fortunately, that does not happen in package-
files like .wo and .nib.
- Due to the same problem, if you move a directory manually (using
the Finder, for example) you will screw up the working copy. You need
to move directories with svn mv. Anyway it's much better than CVS
that didn't allow directory moving (or deleting) at all.
I recommend you NOT to use xCode SVN mechanisms, but instead use
the terminal (or a graphical app like svnX). I had bad results with
xCode. Anyway, you'll quickly learn that using SVN on the CLI is even
easier than using CVS with a GUI! :P
I never tried Preforce, so I cannot give my opinion about that.
Yours
Miguel Arroz
On 2006/03/11, at 21:24, email@hidden wrote:
Hi all,
I hope this doesn't kick off a flame war; I know this can be one
of those semi-religious topics. But I'm hoping we can have a civil
discussion about it.
I've used CVS forever, and want to move into something more
modern. I heard from several people I really trust that Perforce
is da bomb, and in my tests it worked just fine. I had occasion to
use their support, and was impressed by how good it was. However,
the $800 per seat cost is pretty steep for a small company, and it
seemed clear from reading both the Xcode and WO lists that there
are a lot of people using Subversion. So I decided to look into that.
After reading through the Manning book on Subversion, I was
starting to have doubts. There were a distressing number of places
where the author seemed to be giving workarounds to limitations in
Subversion, without quite admitting that was what he was doing. I
just didn't feel like I was reading about a polished product, one
that would be so much better than CVS that it would be worth the
effort to switch. However the siren call of "free" was still
beckoning me, so I started monitoring the Subversion user's list.
I don't read all the posts there but from the ones I do read it
seems like a bit of a pattern is emerging. The users there are
extremely protective of their software of choice, and they don't
take kindly to people suggesting improvements. There was recently
a knockdown dragout over whether the "cvs tag" functionality should
be added to Subversion or not. Additionally, it appears that the
Subversion developers are not terribly interested in what the user
community cares about; a good number of the replies on the tags
thread could be boiled down to "Subversion rulez, we don't need no
stinkin' tags, and why are you bothering to argue about this since
the developers don't take requests". It was not a terribly
impressive or inspiring exchange. I've been part of communities
like this before and it seems to me that when the users have a bad
attitude they usually caught it from the developers, and when the
developers have a bad attitude the software ends up suffering.
OTOH, there have been some big splashy conversions to Subversion
lately; Sourceforge is now offering it, among others. So it's not
like the Subversion project is going to fade into petulant
obscurity any time soon, even if they deserved to.
So... any thoughts on why I should (or should not) go with
Subversion or Perforce or something else entirely are all welcome.
Also, for those using Subversion, are you using it through Xcode or
with some other front end? It seems that some of it's limitations
can be solved by using the right client software, but there are so
many to choose from that it's hard to tell which one is the best.
Thanks!
janine
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"I felt like putting a bullet between
the eyes of every Panda that wouldn't
scr*w to save its species." -- Fight Club
Miguel Arroz
http://www.ipragma.com
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