Advice on Source Control/Code Repository

Let me explain the situation first.
13 Developers, developing html, cgi, some jsp, asp.net web sites & web applications.  What would you suggest as a source control/code repository application.  Not looking to spend a ton on but willing to purchase or go open source.  What's your advice on a product? Many Thanks,

JB
Monday, June 28, 2004

Can't go wrong with Perforce..but it's a bit pricey..


CVS + Tortoise ain't bad either...

Stay away from SourceSafe ;-)

GiorgioG
Monday, June 28, 2004

CVS is *ONLY* good if you have a good interface.  Tortoise is good, but there are lots of others.  I used Guntspud as it's java-based and works on everything.


Subversion has gained some huge ground over the past year or two as it seems to offer much more flexibility and real ability over CVS.

KC
Monday, June 28, 2004

If you are doing ASP.NET using VS.NET, May I suggest you to look at Vault from SourceGear.

http://www.sourcegear.com

It can be integrated with VS.NET which can be really useful.

JD

JD
Monday, June 28, 2004

KC, do you have a link to this Guntspud?

I don't see it mentioned anywhere.

Edward
Monday, June 28, 2004

You can also integrate Subversion with Visual Studio, but I don't recommend it, it's slow.  I don't miss VSS-VS integration at all, shell integration with Tortoise rocks.

brad
Monday, June 28, 2004

I'll second SourceGear.

We don't use the VSS integration (we use the CSV style configuration) and have not had a single problem.

Marc LaFleur
Monday, June 28, 2004

Another vote for Vault (I use the free single-developer license at home).  At work we use Borland's StarTeam (pricey, but good).  Both use TCP/IP so they work well for VPN-connected users.

Stay far away from Source Safe.

Chip H.
Monday, June 28, 2004

I tried to use CVS for a while ... it can be really painful.

Recently I've started using SVN.  It's much, much better.  And it has an explorer-plugin-tool (which I haven't used, since I'm not on Windows), and a browser application (which I have used -- it's only so-so, but improving).  And the SVN documentation is simply superb.

I haven't used any of the proprietary ones in years, but if it's down to CVS and SVN, I would try to avoid CVS at (almost) all costs.

former CVS user
Monday, June 28, 2004

Agreed. Now that Subversion hit 1.0, there's no reason not to use it. It's par with CVS on most things, and superior in many others ways. I can't think of a single thing that I lost by moving from CVS to SVN, but I did gain some pretty significant benefits.

Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com)
Monday, June 28, 2004

Darn I never realized SourceSafe and SourceGear are two different things. One is the best and one is the worst? This is too confusing. Somebody needs to change the name of their product to clear this up or half the people are going to avoid the good product and buy the bad one.

Dennis Atkins
Monday, June 28, 2004

Oh and for me I use CVS. It's OK and its free. It can be annoying to deal with in some ways but you always know its available. It's the C language of source control - you should know it just in case.

Dennis Atkins
Monday, June 28, 2004

The disadvantage of Subversion is that drivers are not yet available for all tools. CVS on the otherhand seems to have drivers that plug into everything.

Dennis Atkins
Monday, June 28, 2004

Dennis, I believe the company name is SourceGear, not the product. The product is Vault. They also make a product to help SourceSafe users.

mb
Monday, June 28, 2004

Yeah, I know it when I think about it, but when just reading a thread there is a phoneme collision in the mindshare space. So when reading that Source Safe is bad, I think "Poor Eric!" and only after a while do I realize that the person doesn't mean vault. This made me realize that many people who hear that Source Safe is rotten end up believing that Vault is rotten.

Dennis Atkins
Tuesday, June 29, 2004

What besides the Vault and SourceSafe also integrates into VB6 and VS.NET ide?

About two hours ago installed SourceSafe, it worked but didn't look too solid. Just didn't feel right.

Now for the past two hours have been trying to install SourceGear Vault :( Make sure to read the installation guide BEFORE installing, otherwise, a small fuck up in the process and gotta do it all over.

BTW, does anyboy know a way to administer MSDE 2000? For the life of me, I cannot find anywhere how to tinker with MSDE options besides what I see in VS.Net 2003

Poof
Tuesday, June 29, 2004

Jalindi Igloo <use google> installs CVS inside VS6 and VB6 - works well enough for me. There's also a Zeus CVS adapter for VS6/VB6 and one called "PushOK". Never tried those.

Subversion also has this kind of solution, don't remember it's name.

Ori Berger
Tuesday, June 29, 2004

http://gruntspud.sourceforge.net/

Snotmonster
Tuesday, June 29, 2004

http://ankhsvn.tigris.org/

brad
Tuesday, June 29, 2004

We've been VSS for about 6 years but are in the middle of a migration to Subversion w/ the Tortoise shell extensions for windows.

I like Subversion a hell-of-a-lot better than VSS.

Anybody done this (VSS to Subversion) and got any pointers for the migration of version history?

Sgt. Sausage
Tuesday, June 29, 2004

I gotta say that our team has been using Source Safe for the last year with no problems. Our admin put the repository on a linux box and I don't know if that helps. No corruption. Everything as worked just as expected.

me
Tuesday, June 29, 2004

No, it doesn't help. It's not transactional. You can get partially changed files with VSS, because it's based entirely on file sharing. There's no server component at all.

You may think your repository isn't corrupted, but when was the last time you ran the utility that checks for corruption? Most people don't know they've got a corrupted repository until it's too late.

Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com)
Tuesday, June 29, 2004

"Now that Subversion hit 1.0, there's no reason not to use it"

Well, except if you want to use unicode. Or have exclusive checkouts for binary files. Sorry - svn still isn't ready to play. Maybe next year. (They should make that their tag line ;)

Robert 'Groby' Blum
Tuesday, June 29, 2004

You completely dropped the context that I was comparison Subversion to CVS. CVS does not support exclusive locking, nor Unicode files as text files. Subversion is not behind the curve here at all.

Brad Wilson (dotnetguy.techieswithcats.com)
Tuesday, June 29, 2004

To manage MSDE, load SQL Server's Enterprise Manager

MilesArcher
Tuesday, June 29, 2004

> CVS is *ONLY* good if you have a good interface.

The Zeus for Windows editor/IDE comes with a SCC-CVS interface that make the intergation with CVS almost seamlessly:

    http://www.zeusedit.com/lookmain.html

Jussi
Tuesday, June 29, 2004

>> does anyone know a way to administer MSDE 2000? For the life of me, I cannot find anywhere how to tinker with MSDE options besides what I see in VS.Net 2003

Here's an idea:
http://www.xtras.net/categories/SqlServerMsde.asp

Mike Schinkel
Thursday, July 1, 2004

"Anybody done this (VSS to Subversion) and got any pointers for the migration of version history?"

I am preparing my company for this jump too. There is a script on the net to load VSS to SVN while preserving history. When I used it I found some bugs and the author said later he included the fixes in the original script. I didn't retest it though.

http://www.riseup.com/~brettw/dev/VSS2Subversion.html

Also you have to be aware of Asp.Net web projects problem. You can find a fix here:

http://www.pluralsight.com/fritz/Samples/aspdotnet_without_web_projects.htm


I have run many times dry conversions and I have a whole procedure to follow when the company decides to make the switch. If you want to find more details about the problems I encountered, you can contact me offline.

coresi
Thursday, July 1, 2004

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