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: Karl <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 12 Mar 2006 22:42:25 -0500
I personally believe that an SCS, whichever poison / flavour you
choose, is a very good idea. Its nice to be able to remove the
'oops' factor and to get back to a prior version of code. Or to have
some assistance with branching code.
However I really understand what Ian is saying with respect to any
overhead: I believe in the role of librairian..someone who manages
your code, checks it in, etc, etc. Whichever language you use, it is
a valuable role. Understanding every aspect of your code and its
life cycle is critical. An SCS is a tool that can assist and also
deal with the oops factor.
Karl
On 12-Mar-06, at 10:33 PM, Arturo Pérez wrote:
Well, Ian, that's certainly radical. I must say that I would
really feel must comfortable having a SCS handy as I like to make
lots of small revisions.
My personal process is make revisions, get to a stable (but not
necessarily bug-free) point and do a backup. I prefer to use an
SCS for backup as the tools are mostly engineered with that in
mind. But a plain backup would probably work well, too.
The only OS I know of that supported that nicely is VMS but even it
only supports 32,000 versions of a file :-)
-arturo
On Mar 12, 2006, at 8:08 PM, Ian Joyner wrote:
Now what are your real requirements? I'll throw in another thought
for you – don't bother with an SCS at all! For small companies and
small projects they really are not necessary and add so much
overhead that you almost have to employ an expert to get whichever
one you choose working.
Rather than wasting such resources, the money is better spent on
someone who really understands software structure will get your
class structure right and develop neat programs. Perhaps once that
is right, an SCS might help, but too often the reverse is the case
and an SCS is used to help manage a mess of a software system.
Of course, this comment might start off the real religious war
since the process and methodology people don't like the real truth
to be known that they are really just hiding behind their tools
("the project failed, but don't blame us we did everything right
according to some misguided book"). Since I don't know the real
structure of your company or development team I can't really
comment, but I can only say that SCS systems are not necessarily a
mandatory part of the development process, and it is worth
thinking about, since none of these tools seem to be without their
problems (which you must expend energy and resources to solve).
(Oh yeah and be wary of the marketing pitch of these methodologies
that says you are obviously a hacker if you are not using this or
that tool. They know how to make people feel inferior if they are
not using them and of course can go straight to management, who
will fall for the pitch. Goes back to the SA/SD days and probably
further, but I know even Larry Constantine who wrote the book with
Yourdon woke up to that one and moved on.)
OK, I'm going back to reading "Object-Oriented Software
Construction" now.
Ian
On 12/03/2006, at 8:24 AM, 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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