[H-GEN] source control software

[Martin Pool]

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and
Unix-related topics. ]

Christopher Biggs wrote:

> > i have decided to do a management assignment of mine on the effects of
> > different source control software on developer habits.
> >
> > i'd like to have a look at as many different pieces of software as
> > possible, currently i plan to have a look at sccs (cssc), rcs, cvs and
> > aegis, any other favourites out there? i'd prefer to stick to free
> > stuff, as it's the only type of software that hangs around long enough
> > and actually makes a difference to a large number of people.

We use CVS.  It works well, as you know, but at Minestar is a little
slow because the server is a poor little SPARCstation-10.  A checked out
& built repository is 248MB this morning (wow!  no wonder my disk is
full), and it takes 10-20 minutes to update.

It's taken a while (months) to get some people comfortable with it,
especially with not having exclusive locks.  Eventually people come to
like it.

ClearCase from Rational seems to be the best nonfree software: it's the
opposite of CVS in many ways, being highly-featured, intrusive and
expensive.  You might do well to read some of their docs.

I really like seeing who modified files, and when... it tells me who to
talk to first when something doesn't work.  We have CVSweb, people don't
use it that often.  Some people use emacs (vc + pcl-cvs + granny), and
the rest use WinCVS.

We often use personal branches when we're doing nontrivial changes and
want to get them off our local disk but aren't ready to compile.  Every
time we release (4-6 weeks), we make a new branch and make perhaps 40
commits to that branch to fix little bugs.

Our QA people check out the head every day, build and test it, then zip
up and save the results.  If your changes stop it compiling or working
it's quite embarassing.

AFAIK other Mincom projects use custom wrappers around CVS (in some
cases the wrappers are bigger).

It could be better.  I'm looking forward to BitKeeper.

> We'd be dead in the water without good revision control 

Us too.  Before I arrived we used a shared RCS directory, which I
imagine/hear was pretty unpleasant.

-- 
 /\\\  Mincom | Martin Pool          | martinp at mincom.com
// \\\        | Software Engineer    | Phone: +61 7 3303-3333
\\ ///        | Mincom Ltd.          | 
 \///         | Teneriffe, Brisbane  | Speaking for myself only

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