Source Control with Branching and VS support?

[Brad Stiles]

Rob Caldecott wrote:

VisualSVN + AnkhSVN + TortoiseSVN.

+1 on that recommendation. That's our combination. We host the Subversion repositories on Linux/Apache, which mitigates the speed issue somewhat. The biggest slowdown for us is network bandwidth when communication with the repository is required.

[Brad Stiles]

Che Mass wrote:

If we need to then we'll probably get the VisualSVN client, but in these economic climates.....Maybe we'll just stick with the tortoise!

We've found that TortoiseSVN will handle about 95% of what we want to do on a daily basis. Where a VS plugin (AnkhSVN, VisualSVN) helps greatly is when you need to rename or move stuff in your project. Using TSVN alone, you have to either do the rename/move in Windows Explorer, and then adjust your Visual Studio project, or do it in Visual Studio and then try to figure out how to make TSVN view it as a move instead of a delete and add of a brand new file. Using the plug-in (we use AnkhSVN because it's open-source and free, but VisualSVN is based on TortoiseSVN), it's a matter of simply doing the move/rename in the Visual Studio Solution Explorer.

[DetroitJ]

We have a team of 6 devs and we are using SourceGear Fortress. Fortress takes Vault and adds work item tracking and build server integration. One of our devs has used many other systems; Clear Case, CVS, Subversion, and TFS and he believes SourceGear is the best. I implemented SCM at our company and through my many evals, SourceGear had the easiest product to install, configure and manage. It was also the least expensive commercial option. We have had a couple of minor issues but support was very helpful. They provide a good SDK and API to write custom tools for builds and various management operations.

[moongarden]

Can anyone suggest a good write-up/tutorial on SVN with VS? Cheers Terry

[Fabio Franco]

Definitely subversion and TortoiseSVN. No issue with performance and these are full-featured free solutions. Also there is AnkhSVN (I'm using v2.0) which is a VS integration plugin. It is easy to use and I never had any issue with it, and it is not really necessary, TortoiseSVN does a good job by itself. The learning curve of TortoiseSVN is really short. Here is an article that demonstrates that: Getting started with Subversion - Peter's Gekko[^] I hope this helps. Regards, Fábio

[Fabio Franco]

Here: Getting started with Subversion - Peter's Gekko[^] I hope this helps. Regards, Fábio

[Member 3730942]

SourceGear Vault. Zero learning curve. Great VS Studio plug-in. SQL Server repository for your code. Includes tool to import your existing Visual Source Safe database. Free single user license. Good price for additional users. Overall bullet-proof.

[ghard68]

I've also heared about this new Shelving feature, and I see it's really something I would regulary use. But where is the difference between - Putting something "on shelve" - Putting it in an new branch. Is it just the benefit, nobody else sees my shelve ? Or minor adminstativ overhead?

[Tim Friesen]

Here Here!!!

Tim Friesen

[jsrjsr]

A number of our developers were using PVCS. Now they've been pushed to use ClearCase. Most of them liked PVCS better -- although I think it's mostly that they were very used to it.

[Matt Michielsen]

I'm in the process of switching from subversion to Mercurial (http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/wiki/) and am liking it quite a bit so far. Plus, the Tortoise client for Windows is almost exactly the same for both.

[Jason Christian]

We are using Accurev - branching/merging are a piece of cake, and it works well with multiple devs. Pretty shallow learning curve for devs - a little more for Admin (some of the functions are tricky to find in the GUI).

[Arjan Keene]

I work at a 150+ devcount site; we use VSTS/TFS2008, a necessity given the volume of projects and developers. But ... we are also running into ceiling issues with branching/merging and need MS consultancy to repair. TFS is by far the most mature source control system, but is actually not mature enough yet for flagship enterprise usage. Undoubtedly will become so in Rosario++. If you use VSS now and are in a 10+ developer situation, I still would advise migrating to TFS. You will however need someone (+ backup) with more than just suferficial knowledge of the workings of merging and branching. Tips and tricks are required, e.g. when it comes to issues due to renames, deletions, moves, simultaneously in changesets, branching for overlapping release management, component version integration issues, etc. etc.

Regards, Arjan Keene

[otomazeli]

Well we use Surround from Seapine and it's an amazing tool much better then Source Safe. http://www.seapine.com/surroundscm.html regards, :-D

[DragonsRightWing]

We're using Subversion with TortoiseSVN and VisualSVN for VS integration - we found that doing as much as possible from within Visual Studio (using VisualSVN) seems to be very intuitive and reduces the learning curve significantly - We haven't worked with branching/merging much, though... We have not noticed any speed issues, but we do have very good bandwidth on the local network...

[Yortw]

I've never used it, but you could try 'Vault' (http://www.sourcegear.com) We used TFS, and it's pretty good... but then pricing wasn't an issue for us, and although its' good and a alot better than source safe, has some nice features etc. some of the implementation details still leave a lot to be desired.

[patbob]

Used SourceSafe for 8 dev team, back before MS acquired it. Good, but I also recall replicating the database to effect release "branches". Back then it used a binary gobblygook database format, that self-corrupted (!) over time. Wouldn't use it by choice ever again. Where I work now we use CVSnt backserver with WinCVS (v1.3 -- later clients are too confusing) as a windows client for a 16 dev team (12 Lin, 3 Win). Steep, and imperfect (lacks file rename/move and dir hierarchy versions), but OK (branch/merge good). CVS is RCS based, so checkin/label/branch are slow because entire repository file must be rewritten, but chechouts are fast. Any RCS-based control will suffer similarly (PVCS used to be RCS based, dunno what it is now). A big advantage of RCS is that data is kept in the clear, making recovery possible with a text editor worst case. Don't know about others, but I know you can run CVS through a ssh tunnel when away from the office. That's convenient when you're working code at home or on the road.

patbob

[Roman Hnatiuk]

Definitely you should take a look at Perforce - it is absolutely the best (but costs rather hefty $). We are using Subversion now (people were recommending it, and we thought we will save some money by not using Perforce), and I cannot say that it is very bad, but at the same time I am not sure that I will use it in my next project - slow, big repository, rather rudimentary tools (TortoiseSVN is worse than ancient WinCVS, and not even comparable to Perforce), many small issues (especially with branching/merging/reintegration).

[vsrivas]

Here is a question that I could use some help with. What is better CVS or Subversion in terms of featuresa and ease of use. Is there a easy to use client for subversion such as WinCVS is for CVS Thanks, Vaibhav

[si618]

From my understanding there really isn't any difference. TortoiseSVN does this naturally (unless you switch after branch) Subversion (by default) doesn't enforce any constraints on your repository structure, you find a convention that works for you. I like that flexibility. Of course you can use path-based authorisation or pre-commit hooks and to enforce rules if you really need them - we just use groups for authentication/authorisation, a pre-commit hook for enforcing log comments and a post-commit hook on some paths for email notifications.