The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5)

Subversion

Anyone uses Subversion for version control? Before to switch from CVS I'd like to hear something from you.

Thanks

Califfo
Thursday, March 18, 2004

It's amazing. We love it. We switched from CVS.

Now, go do your own testing. Don't take our words for it. :-p

Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com)
Thursday, March 18, 2004

You might want to take a look at this thread over on Ask Joel.
http://discuss.fogcreek.com/newyork/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=3512&ixReplies=18

Ken McKinney
Thursday, March 18, 2004

We've switched to it instead of CVS. Apart from a few peeves regarding tunnelling the protocol and what a pain firewalls are, it works.

Katie Lucas
Thursday, March 18, 2004

Switched from SourceSafe. Also love it.

Ian Olsen
Thursday, March 18, 2004

The company that I work for is also looking to migrate away from Visual Source Safe.

Originally, we were going to switch to CVS but Subversion has been added to the table as a possible candidate.

Our main criteria for a new source control system is one that's free and is not VSS. VSS does not support multiple check outs and since from time to time, more than one person needs to check out the same class, we need something that can handle that can handle the subsequent merge with ease (something else that VSS is horrible at).

-A.F.

Avrom Finkelstein
Thursday, March 18, 2004

Avrom,

VSS DOES support multiple check outs.

coresi
Thursday, March 18, 2004

>> VSS DOES support multiple check outs.

Support yes, works well no. From past experience, merging in VSS will kill your files. We currently use the single check out rule for VSS. I would prefer to be rid of VSS but we have more pressing things to do -- like write software.

Billy Boy
Thursday, March 18, 2004

I agree that VSS's support for multiple checkouts is extremely bad... bad enough that I would consider it to simply not have that function, and never turn it on.

Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com)
Thursday, March 18, 2004

My company just switched to subversion yesterday.

I'm excited. I've been looking forward to this for a while.

But I don't have any real world experience with it yet, so my opinion is still purely anticipatory.

Benji Smith
Friday, March 19, 2004

What are the best documents to read to learn Subversion basics?

I'm new to CVS systems (some minor VSS experience) and completely new to Subversion. Using it with the Tortoise GUI.

Mr. Analogy
Saturday, March 20, 2004

"Version Control with Subversion", an online book

http://svnbook.red-bean.com/

Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com)
Sunday, March 21, 2004

Many thanks for your feedback

I have started using Subversion one week ago on a little project. It's very simple to use, and it has very good and complete documentation. The installation process (on WinXP) is painless and quick. Very good.

I'm interested to know if someone has used it for a long time, or on a large project, and if it is reliable.

Califfo
Monday, March 22, 2004

Been using it for source control on linux, solaris, and Windows. Scripts, documentation, and binaries -- a few thousand items. Works well, doesn't crash, lots of APIs available for scripting. I'm impressed how often it just does what "makes sense" in a given situation, there are very few cases with cryptic gotchas. The initial install is a bit of a pain (may have improved since 8 mo ago) but is definitely worth testing out.

Dave S
Monday, April 5, 2004