Source Control with Branching and VS support?

Che Mass

Does anyone know of a good source control that has/is: >Branching and Merging >Shallow learning curve >speedy >Good windows tools OR a worthwhile VS plugin I'm looking at subversion (ok, but seems slow), Team foundation (too much - and HOW MUCH???) & Git, but i don't know enough! At the moment we are using the flagship of the microsoft line - SourceSafe! It's fine for most of our little one-man web projects, but for multi-dev use? erm..... No. We're currently working on a project that is different on production, staging and dev. Different bits are added at different times, some things are pushed to production, some things not.... blergh! So, i need a good, easy to use, source control with branching/merging. Over to you....

Dave Parker

Perforce is good. After that Subversion would be my 2nd choice.

Zoltan Balazs

Che Mass wrote:

I'm looking at subversion (ok, but seems slow),

How do you measured? I'm using it for years never thought about speed as number one priority in a source control.

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Ed Poore

Subversion and VisualSVN. No competition.

peterchen

I have no problem with VSS and multiple developers (I'll probably get voted down for that), provided that: your LAN is reliable you don't need remote access you have a "branching guru", and you are ok that he does not want to be disturbed. (or at least, you can outrun the hobbit). We are running on this setup for over 8 years, with 3..4 developers on the same repository and a huge fat project. All this with a single data loss that could be recovered from last nights backup + the local files + a very few developer-hours. Branching sucks royally, though, and merging is best done without telling VSS about it. It is so bad that our release branches actually run on a separate repository. Working branch support is the one major reason I want to move away from VSS.

The VS integration tools for SVN seem OK enough, but I wasn't really impressed, I found them neither "intuitive" nor "a bliss" nor "all you can ask for" as they are typically described. The one thing the guys here INSIST on here is exclusive checkout. I expected some backlash for enabling shared checkouts on the VSS repository, but I never expected that I had to give in on that. As I understand - and mostly agree - is that calling someone to "please check in foo" is a no brainer on both sides, wehreas merging the changes of two people requires that someone understands BOTH changes and easily introduces errors.

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Lost User

VisualSVN + AnkhSVN + TortoiseSVN.

Graham Bradshaw

peterchen wrote:

I'll probably get voted down for that

Not by me :-D

Anna Jayne Metcalfe

For intensive branching and merging, Perforce[^] is almost certainly your best bet. I wouldn't claim it to have a shallow learning curve though! For ease of migration and solid Visual Studio support your best bet is almost certainly SourceGear Vault[^] (it's virtually a drop in replacement for SourceSafe, but with the data stored in a SQL Server database).

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Che Mass

That's what i've currently got set up on my machine for testing, and it seems fine. I've been told that git is faster, but i really need something nice and stable that we can all work with. I haven't really got on with ankh though - for some reason, it doesn't seem to like the solution file being anywhere other than with the project - we work on web projects mostly, sometimes with extra c# projects and/or setup projects, so they can sometimes be quite scattered on disk. Once i got the project nicely set up with ankh though, it didn't give me any branching options. Probably me just missing something - does anyone know of good tutorials for this setup?

Jerry Evans

I'd vote for Vault as well. Excellent (and free) for a single user/server. Plugs into SQL Server 2K onwards without problems. UI has a couple of quirks and I do wish it grokked VS projects so you could import the whole thing in one go.

Gary R Wheeler

We use VSS as well. We eventually wrote our own branch application. It branches all of the files in a project tree, replicates shares within the tree, and fixes up the ProjectGUID's in the project files and links up the solutions to the projects in the branch correctly. It's sort of an 'XCOPY' for VSS.

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si618

Server: SVN over svnserve, easiest to setup and runs faster than the Apache mod over http Client: TortoiseSVN i.e don't worry about VS integration, AnhkSVN has improved but isn't there yet Branching has always been easy and quick in SVN O(1). Merging has improved in the 1.5 release and will continue to improve. TortoiseSVN makes the learning curve as shallow as you can make an VCS. RTFM! What do you mean by svn being slow (checkout/update/commit?) - are you versioning bin and obj output instead of using svn:ignore? ;-) - do you use lots of svn:externals?

Paul Sanders the other one

I use CVS (and the WinCVS client), but if I were starting afresh I think I would use SubVersion. Don't worry about VS integration - you don't need it. And KDIFF3 is a very useful, free 3-way differencing program which cvan be integrated with a simple batch file:

@echo off
if "%2" == "" goto usage

set filename=%1
set rev=%2

@echo on
cvs update -r %rev% -p %filename% >f1
cvs update -p %filename% >f2
copy .#%filename%.%rev% f3
start "kdiff3" "%programfiles%\kdiff3\kdiff3.exe" f1 f2 f3 -m -o merged
@goto end

:usage
echo Usage: m3 filename base_rev
echo Example: m3 AboutDialog.cpp 1.6
echo Leaves merged output in file 'merged'

:end

Paul Sanders http://www.alpinesoft.co.uk

Ira Rainey

After 8+ years of working with VSS this year I switched to Subversion, and now wonder why I ever put up with VSS at all. We also used SourceOffSite for external access, which was always a pain and a clunky way to access your data externally. If your head is stuck in VSS mode, then you need to step back a little to really appreciate SVN and how to use it properly, but it's a pretty low learning curve. Like many posts already, I'd advocate VisualSVN + TortoiseSVN for the VS and explorer integration, and VisualSVN Server running on the backend, mainly for its simplicity. Another plus, for me anyway, is that it's entirely cross-platform, with tools available for loads of different platforms. No brainer.

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Sandeep Datta

Che Mass wrote:

Team foundation (too much - and HOW MUCH???)

Of all the suggested alternatives VSTS (Visual studio team system) is probably the most hassle free, feature complete (and probably most expensive too). I have been using it for quite some time now (in a team of 4 to 6 devs) and it has been smooth sailing ever since. Support for Branching and merging is excellent too. My favourite feature in VSTS is the ability to shelve what you are doing now and start working from scratch with the version on the source control without losing the current changes (hope this makes sense). Cheers, SDX2000.

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Jean De Spaey

In our company we are using both ClearCase (base) and Perforce. ClearCase is a super system but requires expertise to manage it and it is expensive. Mac support is limited (through Eclipse plugin) It allows versioning of folders too which Perforce is not able to do. A product I evaluated in the past is Plastic SCM (codice) which has all the goodies of Clearcase and Perforce (and many others); it is also much cheaper than ClearCase. Check "www.plasticscm.com". It runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS/X

ian__lindsay 0

We have used VSS for about 10 years - we had some horrible thing called PVCS before that. It has its quirks and it works better if the source database is regularly pruned, but for us - a dev team of 5 - it does the job. It got a whole lot easier when Visual Studio brought in the 'change source control' functionality (about 2003/2005, can't remember exactly). It was manual editing of the project file after a branch before that! I guess we really ought to investigate the alternatives, but we are fairly happy with what we have, and there are other priorities...

hubey

Team Foundation Server has a workgroup edition which works out much less expensive for small shops (up to 5 users). You don't even pay for it as a product in its own right - it's included in the VS Team Dev licence. I was told (by a Microsoft VAR) that the minimum setup is one VS Team Dev licence and the remaining four can be VS Pro plus Foundation Server CALs. The gotcha is the 5-user limit - more users and you will need the full product.

Member 4593559

Hi, We are using Synergy by telelogic atm. been using it for the past 4 years now, and although initially it was a pain in the backside, now I have Build Manager rights :D, I am a lot happier using it! It does branching and Merging pretty well, but its a steep learning curve, not quick(at least not if you have mammoth projects), the GUI is horrendous, and integration with VS could be better. Oh and apparently it is expensive for licenses. Apart from that though, it might be worth a look!

Che Mass

Hmmmm.... I think i may skip that one!