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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?"
"My question is exactly what would this 'better system' look like?"
You said it, BitKeeper. It's there, it's very good, don't people have anything better to do than nagging about other people just charging for their own work?
If you want to give away your work, please do (I'm happy to use it) but you are not BitMovers (the company) mom and have no business telling them what to do.
CVS may be the best open source version control tool right now, it still suffers from a lot of shortcomings.
.. doesn't handle big binary files in a satisfactory way
.. but I'm really waiting for subversion to get mature and usable for production..
Generally speaking, stuff like commit emails need the addition of specific wrappers (see http://cvsreport.sourceforge.net for instance), and CVS doesn't scale well to big projects
It's quite usable
In fact, you exhibit a common misconception. If you want version control, CVS do the work. But what you seem looking for, and what do many of the alternative proposed in the replies is configuration management.
Now, what an ideal system would be? I don't think one size fit all. You need very quick local net access (bye bye CC), and you need infrequently, losely connected internet developpers. But not at the same time. So I don't think tere is one unique response to your question.
My largest problem with most of these revision control systems for Open source is the Lack of the Windows based Servers...I Know I know...but unfortunately most of the development I do is for the company I work for, and I just don't have a choice in these things. I have to develop for windows here, and I have to use windows systems, NO Linux, BSD, etc allowed. However I can't stand most of the Closed Source systems, I would love to be able to use one of the open source systems at work. Before you get tofar down that road of thought, Cygnus(or VMware, etc) is not the right fix here either, the server team does not allow that sort of software on the servers.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Honestly this sounds a lot like many of the features that perforce has (which I use at work too).
Atomic commits -- if perforce can't process all your files in your changelist, it won't submit them. this means if one of hte files in your list is out-of-date with the server version (your revision number is lower than the one on the server, which means you have to resolve the merge) or if you've done something that perforce doesn't like with a file. you can't force it either.
changelist and access control - perforce sets up "clients" which map it's depot on your local computer. you can create as many changelists as you need and as you check out files add them to various change lists, submit one changelist while you have others open, submit some files from a directory and keep others checked out
web viewer/graphical diff - there's a web viewer and the windows version has a diff program.
it does labelling, it supported on EVERYTHING thing (including Mac os pre-X via the Macintosh Programmers Workshop via the Command Line, and OS X via command line)