Vesta Releases First GPL Version

Eugenia writes: "Many are the developers who prefer Perforce in favor of CVS. There is a new player in the field now though. It is called Vesta and it is a replacement for both CVS and 'make'. It handles source revision control and automated construction. It is the result of over 10 years of research and development at the Compaq/Digital Research Center. Just last August Compaq gave the 'ok' to GPL Vesta and since then the 4-member team worked hard to finish up the port to x86 Linux (prior to that, Vesta only worked on Alpha and Tru64 systems). Now, the first Free version is available for download. For a summary of some of the features that make Vesta interesting, see this page."

Comments

CVS is King!

[His name cannot be s]

Actually, my point is, that until someone makes their version control system a drop-in replacement for CVS, CVS will still remain the king.

I like the fact that I can use several different clients for CVS.

On Windows :

WinCVS is a nice CVS system for windows.

CvsIn is a plug-in for MS Visual C++ written by Jerzy Kaczorowski.

TortoiseCVS is a plug-in for Windows Explorer written by Francis Irving.

cvsscc is an SCC interface for CVS.

Jalindi-Igloo is a SCC interface for cvs using the WinCvs shared libraries. It's written by Graham Robertson and it's free!

There's also the command line version.

On Linux, there is a ton more choices.

The simple fact of the matter is there is a million different ways I can access the same repository, no matter my platform.

Until someone comes out with the server that supports CVS's whacked out protocol on port 2401, I ain't ever gonna switch.

I've been running the same CVS repository for about 4 1/2 years on an old Pentium 90 in my basement. I've got hundreds of project sitting on it, and it works fine.

Yes, I'll acknowlege that CVS has it's down sides, but hey, at least it's universal. ;)

Re:How to get the source code

[janic]

Simple solution.

Use their binary, download their code, export it, and put it into CVS if you really want.

I have to agree with them though, there is little point to building a tarball of the source. There are, after all, tons of other projects which use soley(sp?) CVS to distribute their code.

At least using Vesta to download it's own source, you can be pretty well guaranteed that you will be getting the latest and greatest version, and not some broken release that someone hasn't bothered to take off their website.

John

Re:Not usable for internet collaboration

[[Xorian]]

That's not the way you would use it for collaboration. The NFS interface is not intended for wide-area access, only for clients within an installation (which can be as small as one system).

The right way to use it is for each contributor to run their own Vesta repository and use Vesta's replicator to keep up to date with other repositories (such as a central master). Vesta's checkout tool automatically contacts the master repository, even if it's remote, and its checkin tool replicates the checked-in version back to the master repository.

We already have several users who work this way, one even running their Vesta repository at the other end of a 56k dialup line.

(BTW, I'm the current maintainer, the one who did much of the work of getting it ported to Linux and released.)

Re:How to get the source code

[[Xorian]]

I kinda figured it wouldn't take long for someone to bring up the spectre of Vesta as a Trojan and reference that classic Thompson piece.

You could certainly do what you describe. Feel free. Extract the sources from the Vesta repository, re-write the entire build description in make, and re-build. (We actually have a web interface to the repository that we're hoping to put up soon so that people can examine and even download the source without having to install Vesta.)

In fact, I challenge anyone so inclined to try and uncover any malicious code in the binaries we've released. It would be nice if someone who was not only paranoid enough but also motivated enough to follow through with that came out of the woodwork. Then perhaps we could have a better response for the next person to cast such aspersions.

We're not distributing tarballs of source for exactly the reason stated in the FAQ: you wouldn't be able to build it without writing new build instructions for make or some other builder. I don't have the time or inclination to write Makefiles to build Vesta. If somebody else wants to, that's fine, that's why its free software.