source control systems: what's the best?

[Catherine Sea]

Catherine: if you're in any way associated with SourceAnywhere, please state it directly.

-f0dder (January 14, 2008, 06:05 AM)

Hey f0dder, thank you for reminding me.

I am working for Dynamsoft and I have modified my post.

Thanks again.

[Catherine Sea]

SourceAnywhere Standalone is also a good one.

It looks like a pretty solid product. I like the fact that it seems to be available for many platforms/OS'es. Can you tell us anything on how it compares to, say svn. How well is it's branching support etc?

-Gothi[c] (January 14, 2008, 09:27 PM)

Both Subversion and SourceAnywhere offer good quality version control features. However, if any of the following situations apply to you, we strongly recommend SourceAnywhere:

1. Easier to use, especially for those who know SourceSafe already.
2. Enhanced security. Password Policy provided and more convenient to manage permissions.
3. Much better integration with Microsoft products. Dynamsoft is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. SourceAnywhere passed Optimized for Microsoft Visual Studio, Certified for Windows Vista, and Certified for Windows Server. 
4. Better product integration. SourceAnywhere comes with GUI client, command client, SDK, Eclipse plug-in, Visual Studio integration, Dreamweaver/flash integration, cross-platform client. All are in one product.
5. Web development through FTP and multiple sites are supported. SourceAnywhere can automatically detect which files are changed, and only transfer the changed/added files.
6. Distributed development. If you need to access your version control server from a remote location, the SourceAnywhere cache server can greatly improve your developers' productivity.
7. Better support. Dynamsoft is proud of our service.

Thanks.

[Gothi[c]]

1. Easier to use, especially for those who know SourceSafe already.
2. Enhanced security. Password Policy provided and more convenient to manage permissions.
3. Much better integration with Microsoft products. Dynamsoft is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. SourceAnywhere passed Optimized for Microsoft Visual Studio, Certified for Windows Vista, and Certified for Windows Server. 
4. Better product integration. SourceAnywhere comes with GUI client, command client, SDK, Eclipse plug-in, Visual Studio integration, Dreamweaver/flash integration, cross-platform client. All are in one product.
5. Web development through FTP and multiple sites are supported. SourceAnywhere can automatically detect which files are changed, and only transfer the changed/added files.
6. Distributed development. If you need to access your version control server from a remote location, the SourceAnywhere cache server can greatly improve your developers' productivity.
7. Better support. Dynamsoft is proud of our service.

I assume most of those points are made versus to sourcesafe, and not, say svn, since with svn is integrated in pretty much everything, and just like with cvs there's plugins for many IDE's available, and distributed development is very well supported of course.

The support point may be a key reason for some businesses to use your product.

1. Easier to use, especially for those who know SourceSafe already.

Does that mean the use and design is similar to vss? If so, it may indeed be a great alternative for people feeling 'locked in' with vss, but are frustrated about it's quirks and brokenness.

But I feel you didn't really answer my question though:
How well is it's branching support etc?

The example provided in the link
Renegade provided shows a pretty good scenario:

A revision control system should provide powerful branching support. With strong branching support, developers can easily make minor revisions of old versions while work toward the next major release continues. Highly experimental code can be checked into a branch, keeping it separate from mainstream development but backing it up and making it available to other developers. If the project is "frozen" while a milestone or final release is built, a developer can continue development toward the next version on a branch. (Or more commonly, a new branch can be created for the freeze while general development continues on the main branch. When the release is done, changes on the frozen branch can be merged back into the main branch.) SourceSafe's branching support fails to effectively support any of this.

With powerful branching, a revision control system must also provide strong merging support to reconcile different branches. At the least, the system must allow a developer to examine the differences between two branches, modify them to create a merged version, and when satisfied check them in. SourceSafe's merge support is tightly integrated with checking in, making it difficult to examine differences and test the proposed merge before checking it into the tree. With this weak level of support, it's easy to check non-functioning code into the revision control system.

How would this situation be handled in SourceAnywhere?

[urlwolf]

Great questions.
I'd like to add that without clear integration with a bug tracker, good source control is not as much of a help.

How does sourceanywhere fares in that respect?
I'd compare it to say fogbugz.com which is pretty windows-centric as well.

[vixay]

What is a good source control with integrated bug tracker? I tried looking for a simple subversion based one, but they all seemed complex! I have looked at trac, ditrack, bugzilla ...etc. don't know how it is any easier.

[tinjaw]

If you want source control integrated with a bug tracker that is simple, Subversion and Trac are about as simple as it gets. There are plenty of commercial solutions that integrate source control with bug tracking but I haven't used any of them.

[tinjaw]

Since we have mentioned Subversion and Visual Studio, I thought this crowd would be interested in this except from the openCollabNet newsletter.

openCollabNet Technical Newsletter - Volume 15, February 2008
 
AnkhSVN, the Visual Studio plugin for Subversion, is now on
openCollabNet. AnkhSVN allows you to perform common Subversion
operations from inside the Microsoft Visual Studio (MSVS) IDE, such as
viewing the status of your source code, updating your working copy, and
committing changes. You can even browse your repository and use your
favorite diff tool. CollabNet now partners with the AnkhSVN open source
development team to accelerate the development of the plugin and grow
the community. Our goal is to ensure that Subversion and CollabNet users
have access to a fully featured open source Subversion plugin for MSVS.

-openCollabNet

[f0dder]

AnkhSvn slows down Visual Studio launch time down majorly, even when opening projects not under source control . Also, I've had some stability issues with it, causing corrupt local repositories - pretty nasty.

It's a shame, because it's a pretty nice tool aside from those issues.

[tinjaw]

I have recently gotten interested in using Bazaar and Subversion. Does anybody have any experience with this combo?

[Shades]

My friend here likes and loves CVS, using WinCVS...but man, do I hate WinCVS!!!  And SVN is not allowed, because it is not file-based 

Not that it does such a bad job, but it is too hard to find out which Branches/tags are in use. Normally it is only possible to open Eclipse and use its CVS browser to find out what is where!!

@vixay:
In the story above I mention Eclipse. Eclipse has a beautiful plugin for the JIRA bugtracker system. JIRA is not free, but once you start with that one (especially in Eclipse) the reporting/tracking/maintenance of bugs will be a whole lot easier. From memory I know that PostGres, Oracle, MS-SQL and MySQL databases can be used. If you don't want or care to use the Eclipse setup, it's web interface is also very, very workable.

(and no, I'm just a happy user...not affiliated or related in any kind of way)

More info about JIRA: http://www.atlassian.com

[f0dder]

tinjaw: hmm, mixing BZR+SVN? How?

[tinjaw]

I will use Subversion for my local development and Bazaar when I need distributed. Bazaar can import a dump from Subversion, so it will be easy to migrate up if I need to. The main reason to stick with Subversion is the tool support.

[Eóin]

Funny, I work backwards to that tinjaw, I use git for my local dev and 'git-svn' it to a subversion repo for distribution.

[mitzevo]

currently using subversion for web dev, and it's all good 

[Catherine Sea]

SVN works well for a small team.


Catherine Sea
http://www.scmsoftwa...ationmanagement.com/

[Catherine Sea]

SourceAnywhere Standalone is much faster than SVN.



Catherine Sea
http://www.scmsoftwa...ationmanagement.com/

[wraith808]

Subversion here... Though I prefer StarTeam, I must say that SVN is a worthy alternative.  Started using it because a lot of contract opportunities are starting to question your SVN knowledge...