Git, Subversion, CVS

[threaded]

Been asked to give a recommendation type thang for this: CVS, Git, Svn.

As usual, read everything on the tubes, so would like some real world thoughts, comments, miscellaneous personal abuse...

[Sysman]

Another one for you:

What is the Difference Between Mercurial and Git? from which I gather there's a Windows native version of Mercurial if that's a concern.

[minestrone]

I would go with subversion, I think it is still the case that if you copy a file from one location to another with CVS you lose the history. Makes it a pain in the arse when refactoring. SVN is pretty much industry standard now.

[VectraMan]

Yes SVN is pretty good, free, and has good GUI tools like Tortoise SVN to make it easy to use. IIRC from a previous client, CVS is all file based, so if you say commit 10 files as part of one change you get 10 commits with different version numbers for each, which then makes tracking changes as a whole much more difficult. And I think what Ministrone says about renaming or moving files is right too. SVN is really CVS done properly, so there's no reason to go with CVS.

GIT sounded quite interesting, but seems to be based around large distributed teams which might not be quite so good for a smaller team. It seemed to me that the actual day to day working would be more difficult, and would require much more management. But I don't speak with any experience of using it.

[Durbs]

SVN very good and has lots of support and associated tools (most of which are free, which is nice). Have used VisualSVN and found it really simple to setup and use.

Currently using StarTeam (http://www.borland.com/us/products/starteam/index.html) and am still getting my head around it. Initial thoughts are that its good though and had no problems so far.

[lightng]

SVN. Microsoft use it - which is a great advert for source-safe.

[Durbs]

SVN. Microsoft use it - which is a great advert for source-safe.

Not allowed to use SVN at current client co (I suggested it for current project) as it's open source and policy prohibits the use of such apps.

Saying that though, happy with StarTeam and just glad it didn't go on VSS!

[thunderlizard]

I voted for svn. But I'm using perforce at the moment and that's OK too.

[OrangeHopper]

Recently recommended SVN when client wanted alternative to PVCS and CVS.

I like the fact it effectively takes a copy of the repository on each check-in which means it records changes in directory content.

[VectraMan]

SVN. Microsoft use it - which is a great advert for source-safe.

SourceSafe is ancient. They haven't updated it since version 6, which I think was 1998.