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Designing a New Version Control System?
tekvov asks: "When Linus Torvalds decided to use BitKeeper as the version control system for Linux there seemed to be a lot of controversy and many challenges to create a better system than CVS. My question is exactly what would this 'better system' look like? How is the subversion project, Tigris, doing at creating a new version control system? Basically, does the Open Source Community need new tools in this aspect of development? And if so, how should these new tools look?"
Subversion isn't the only open-source revision control system out there. Check out these projects as well:
OpenCM
arch
Stellation
PRCS
Regardless of where your particular alliegances lie---whether it be with arch or subversion or opencms or bitkeeper or whatever---it does seem obvious that the open source community is asking things of CVS that it is just not able to deliver. One need only look at some of the problems large projects like GCC have with it to realize that some alternative is needed.
And if that doesn't convince you, well, it's not for nothing that some of the primary developers of CVS are now working on subversion.
Now, of the new crop of tools, the only one I've played with extensively is subversion---but I am absolutely blown away by how well it seems to make common operations simple. Even with its documentation in a very rough state, and despite its many architectural differences from CVS (with which I have several years of experience), I was able to figure out how to maintain a vendor branch and local modifications, perform updates on both, merge them, tag releases, etc., very quickly and easily. Its developers have obviously looked at CVS to see what things it does not do well that people do frequently, and designed accordingly.
Is subversion for you? Who knows. But if you use CVS a lot---especially if you find yourself cursing CVS a lot---you should do yourself a favor and look at some of the alternatives. A lot of lessons have been learned, and you should avail yourself of the benefits.
Urgle.
Clearcase might cut it for most corporate types. Sure it's got tons of features, but you'll get a groetesque design and a bad implementation for free.
(Try scaling a clearcase server and you'll see how bad the design is... Hint: Adding more CPUs won't help you.) No, most people won't care, but you do if you need to scale it to several thousands of active developers.
Even though I dislike the product, its has more functions than you'll ever need. Integration with different platforms and products are superb, if you're willing to pay...
However it lacks in areas where the developer isn't fully connected (i.e. with LAN access to the view and vob servers).
IMNHO, what the open source community, by definition, needs is something that'll work in a distributed (and disconnected) environment. Clearcase does NOT come even close to delivering that, CVS does, but functionality wise, BitKeeper blows them both away.
I haven't looked at SubVersion in a long time (before it was self hosting) and it looked promising, but IIRC it lacked some of the more advanced functionality that BitKeeper has.
Personally I'd much prefere using a completely free version. Not because I don't like to support the BitKeeper team (I'll buy the product if I use it commercially!), but because of the open logging function.
It just comes down to the fact that I like my privacy...
-oswa
I agree, Perforce is a very solid product indeed. And all the commandline tools are there for Linux, and so are the servers. I've used it both on Windows and Linux (both servers and clients) and it works like a charm.
And in case you don't like their fortcomming linux GUI (I hadn't heard about that before, thanks WPIDalamar) they do provide you with an API so you can make one of your own (KPerforce ^_^), which shouldn't take that long really.
The pricing seems very high for an individual, but their pricing is real cheap for this kind of software (for companies) and you can use it without a license but then with max two client specifications. They also have good support (something that is not common unfortunatly).
http://www.perforce.com -- go there and check it out. If you hate paying and want to make your own set of tools you can learn a lot from Perforce.
And I agree, source safe is icky, and so is CVS and source offsite. I haven't had a reason to try out BitKeeper so I unfortunatly don't know how it stacks compared to Perforce.
- fake out CVS by doing a remove/add pair on every file you want to move (which means you lose the revision history of each such file!), or
- manually move files around in the repository (which entirely defeats the purpose of using a revision control system in the first place!)
If anyone out there creates a successor to CVS, please fix this fatal flaw!I'm a ClearCase specialist so I'm biased.
However ClearCase has some -very- good features, and here is what I would arrive at (ideally):
1) Make your repository a mountable file system, supporting multiple types of connection, NFS, SMB, Active Directory, FTP, etc.. When connecting you must specify a profile to be used.
2) Make every user have a number of profiles (Min:1) (like ClearCase views), these profiles contain -all- the info needed to access file versions correctly. They should allow sharing ('base my profile X on the profile Y created by user Z'). And support concepts such as labelling, conditional branching, etc..
3) All profiles are managed from a central server (redundancy?) via a web interface (to achive cross-platform conformity) and command-line interface (SSH based) for scripting/power-users.
I could go on forever, but I think the three above points are the things that matter most to me. Obviously you also need security, administration, storage, etc.. but I think that making files available simultaneously via many common file sharing protocols would produce the greatest benefit.
Finally: MAKE DIRECTORIES VERSIONABLE/BRANCHABLE!, yes it causes some potential headaches, but it's benefits easily outweigh them.
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
Also, they do open source licensing. If you are a certified open source project (I guess they just checkout the project???), you can get licenses for free.
1;
Look, CVS is king.
Yes, King.
I would not hesitate to say that it has it's share of difficulties, but there is no way anything is going to replace it anytime soon. There are many meta-features of CVS that make it unable to be replaced:
1. Multi-platform: I don't mean 3 or 4 or even 5 or 6, bla bla bla. I mean EVERYWHERE. I've seen CVS on more places that anything besides emacs and gcc. And really, anyplace gcc or emacs goes, cvs is the third guy there.
2. Massive Acceptance: CVS is everywhere. 10 million people use it with sourceforge. Another few million elsewhere. It is the common thread that binds us together (kinda like the force!)
3. Massive, Massive Tool support: This is my favorite. You can use it about a hundred different ways. Not 1 gui, but 50!. It goes into command line apps like great!. Show me another tool that has integration with the windows explorer (via TortoiseCVS) like it has. You Can't. (Don't even try that god-awful Bitkeeper's integration:yuk!)
4. SimplicityIt's REALLY simple to use. It's not that complicated. If CVS throws you for a loop, maybe software devleopment really isn't where you should be working. The incompetence among developers is what makes all software look bad.
5. Protocols: You can run CVS thru SSH, RSH, PServer, File Access, and more... It fits into every environment. It works across any damn network. It can jump tall buildings in a single bound!
Really, until someone makes something that trounces CVS in all those areas, AND provides features that "I can't live without" CVS will Rule.
"...In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true..."