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Version Control Systems .. Experiences?

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Owen Densmore

Version Control Systems .. Experiences?

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I've recently moved from my old hosting service, HostGo, to a new one,
Joyent. So after getting the usual out of the way: dumping mysql
databases and reinstalling (converted to utf8), moving my web site,
ditto for email and mail forwarders, I started looking at other
features I'd like to start using.

One was version control systems. So I beam into the "how-to"
http://wiki.joyent.com/shared:kb:version-systems
.. and was blown away by the number of choices!
- Bazaar 0.91
- GIT 1.5.3.6
- Mercurial, version 0.9.5
- Monotone, version 0.37
- Subversion, 1.4.4 (with Ruby, Perl and Python bindings)
- svk, version 2.0.1
.. and a bit surprised that CVS was NOT there!?

Wow! Who'd have thought there'd be so many. Wikipedia to the rescue:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_revision_control_software

But I'd like to poll folks here: Have you had any experience with any
of these? What are the pluses/minuses? If you had to start over,
which would you choose?

Thanks,
-- Owen

Douglas Roberts-2

Version Control Systems .. Experiences?

IMHO, Subversion is the way to go. Been using it for years.

--Doug

--
Doug Roberts, RTI International
droberts at rti.org
doug at parrot-farm.net
505-455-7333 - Office
505-670-8195 - Cell

On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 4:19 PM, Owen Densmore <owen at backspaces.net> wrote:

> I've recently moved from my old hosting service, HostGo, to a new one,
> Joyent. So after getting the usual out of the way: dumping mysql
> databases and reinstalling (converted to utf8), moving my web site,
> ditto for email and mail forwarders, I started looking at other
> features I'd like to start using.
>
> One was version control systems. So I beam into the "how-to"
> http://wiki.joyent.com/shared:kb:version-systems
> .. and was blown away by the number of choices!
> - Bazaar 0.91
> - GIT 1.5.3.6
> - Mercurial, version 0.9.5
> - Monotone, version 0.37
> - Subversion, 1.4.4 (with Ruby, Perl and Python bindings)
> - svk, version 2.0.1
> .. and a bit surprised that CVS was NOT there!?
>
> Wow! Who'd have thought there'd be so many. Wikipedia to the rescue:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_revision_control_software
>
> But I'd like to poll folks here: Have you had any experience with any
> of these? What are the pluses/minuses? If you had to start over,
> which would you choose?
>
> Thanks,
> -- Owen
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>

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Marcus G. Daniels

Version Control Systems .. Experiences?

Douglas Roberts wrote:
> IMHO, Subversion is the way to go. Been using it for years.
All the cool kids are using GIT and Mercurial. But I like SVN too, I
think just because it's like a CVS that works.
(e.g. its familiar)

Robert Holmes

Version Control Systems .. Experiences?

Yup - another vote for Subversion here. A word of warning though: IMHO the
third-party GUIs for Subversion on the Mac suck (in contrast, Tortoise - the
PC-only GUI - is excellent) so you'll spend a lot of time on the command
line.
R

On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 4:31 PM, Marcus G. Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com>
wrote:

> Douglas Roberts wrote:
> > IMHO, Subversion is the way to go. Been using it for years.
> All the cool kids are using GIT and Mercurial. But I like SVN too, I
> think just because it's like a CVS that works.
> (e.g. its familiar)
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>

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Giles Bowkett

Version Control Systems .. Experiences?

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

> All the cool kids are using GIT and Mercurial. But I like SVN too

I generally use svn but I've been persuaded that git is seriously
worth looking into. According to this blogger "git is the next unix."

http://www.advogato.org/person/apenwarr/diary/371.html

--
Giles Bowkett

Blog: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com
Portfolio: http://www.gilesgoatboy.org
Tumblelog: http://giles.tumblr.com
Podcast: http://hollywoodgrit.blogspot.com

Carl Tollander

Version Control Systems .. Experiences?

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

It kinda depends on the usage model. If the project has a lot of
personnel churn and there is a mix of windows and Linux (like my current
one), then cvs or anything centrally administered becomes a bit more
problematic. I am inclined based on recent experiences to agree with
Linus Torvalds, that subversion's motto "CVS done right" is not really a
plus, though subversion is a bit easier to install, I think.

It is rumored that one can make GIT look like CVS, for those who are so
attached. No experience on that though.

Carl

Marcus G. Daniels wrote:

> Douglas Roberts wrote:
>
>> IMHO, Subversion is the way to go. Been using it for years.
>>
> All the cool kids are using GIT and Mercurial. But I like SVN too, I
> think just because it's like a CVS that works.
> (e.g. its familiar)
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
>

Russell Standish

Version Control Systems .. Experiences?

I use Aegis for all my programming tasks. The best thing about it is
forcing you to get testing done right. It is almost impossible to
check in code that doesn't build, and really easy to ensure that
released versions do not have old bugs coming back to haunt you.

The main downside of Aegis, is that it is essentially unix only. Some work has
been done on a Windows port (via Cygwin), but I believe it doesn't
work too well. So for one of my code bases where I interact with
Windows devs, subversion is how I go. And I frequently have to step
through version numbers in subversion to find checkins that compile :)

However, for website version control, Aegis is overkill. There are
very few tests, and little building required for websites. Subversion
ought to work quite well for this purpose.

The only other version control systems I can comment on are CVS (which
sucks) and Microsoft Sourcesafe (which sucks even harder). Just don't
even consider either of those.

On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 07:41:41PM -0700, Carl Tollander wrote:

> It kinda depends on the usage model. If the project has a lot of
> personnel churn and there is a mix of windows and Linux (like my current
> one), then cvs or anything centrally administered becomes a bit more
> problematic. I am inclined based on recent experiences to agree with
> Linus Torvalds, that subversion's motto "CVS done right" is not really a
> plus, though subversion is a bit easier to install, I think.
>
> It is rumored that one can make GIT look like CVS, for those who are so
> attached. No experience on that though.
>
> Carl
>
> Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
> > Douglas Roberts wrote:
> >
> >> IMHO, Subversion is the way to go. Been using it for years.
> >>
> > All the cool kids are using GIT and Mercurial. But I like SVN too, I
> > think just because it's like a CVS that works.
> > (e.g. its familiar)
> >
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
> >
> >
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Mathematics
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 hpcoder at hpcoders.com.au
Australia http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Parks, Raymond

Version Control Systems .. Experiences?

In reply to this post by Owen Densmore

Owen Densmore wrote:

Primary selling point is distributed development - if developers take
their systems off-line or away from the central repository, Bazaar
handles the synchronization in a relatively graceful way.

> - GIT 1.5.3.6

This is the current kernel developers substitute for the commercial
package that blew up on them.

> - Mercurial, version 0.9.5

I don't know anything about this one.

> - Monotone, version 0.37

A developer I trust tells me that this is the best of the bunch.
He's very picky about everything being available and is particularly
impressed by the way Monotone handles authentication via signatures. We
have recommended Monotone to developers of critical systems where
authentication can help prevent life cycle attacks.

> - Subversion, 1.4.4 (with Ruby, Perl and Python bindings)

A new face on the old standby - but you're still working with the old
functionality of the old standby. I think someone else pointed out that
getting CVS right is not necessarily the best of goals.

> - svk, version 2.0.1

I don't know this one.

> .. and a bit surprised that CVS was NOT there!?

Is RCS free, nowadays?

--
Ray Parks rcparks at sandia.gov
Consilient Heuristician Voice:505-844-4024
ATA Department Mobile:505-238-9359
http://www.sandia.gov/scada Fax:505-844-9641
http://www.sandia.gov/idart Pager:800-690-5288

Russell Standish

Version Control Systems .. Experiences?

On Mon, Mar 03, 2008 at 02:02:48PM -0700, Raymond Parks wrote:
>
> Is RCS free, nowadays?
>

Yes. Indeed Aegis by default uses RCS under the hood, although other
functionally equivalent systems can be used as well. RCS is usually
available on Linux systems by default.

--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Mathematics
UNSW SYDNEY 2052 hpcoder at hpcoders.com.au
Australia http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Marcus G. Daniels

Version Control Systems .. Experiences?

Would be nice to have something like Mac Time Machine or ext3cow
(http://www.ext3cow.com) based on GIT.
One could imagine being able to mount a filesystem with a condition that
only showed files with some content, and having every transaction to any
file reversible over time..