Subversion is a version control system which aims to replace CVS by incorporating a modern architecture and needed features currently not found on CVS. The latest interim bugfix release of Subversion is ready. This release is to correct for the problems in the 0.35.0 release and affects Windows users only: fix: file handle leak (r8048), fix: UTF-8 path problem (issue #1660).
Subversion 0.35.1 Released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Sounds good.
Are there any other ‘CVS replacements’ worth noting? How about an OSnews article on the subject?
I am not using any of them (except CVS sometimes), so I can’t write it. If any of our contributor editors or other readers wanna write such an article, we will publish it.
As for SubVersion, I have to admit that it is a fantastic project. It is not yet on the same level as Perforce feature-wise (can’t speak about performance), but it is getting there (Merge will be implemented after v1.0, for example). One thing is for sure though: it beats CVS feature-wise already, even in beta stage.
I’m personally using arch (tla) for my projects.
http://www.gnuarch.org/
It has no problems with moving/renaming or directories like CVS has and features massive use of distributed repositories.
Are there any nice gui front-ends for this subversion thing?
Yup, here’s TortoiseSVN (if you’re using windows): http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/
It’s the “little brother” of TortoiseCVS, the amazing windows CVS client.
And rapidsvn , rapidsvn.tigris.org
I’m also wondering if many opensource projects will switch
to subversion when it reacehs 1.0(the linux kernel is probably out of the question..
. I’ve meen using subversion for about
a year now, and it certanly beats CVS. Which ofcourse is the goal of subversion – fix the flaws in CVS. Some of the developers are former CVS developers also.
monotone
http://www.venge.net/monotone/
darcs
http://abridgegame.org/darcs/
Subversion has merge support
. What they are implementing in the 1.0 release is a better one (now it is pretty much the same as CVS).
Subversion is gaining a lot of momentum (in my opinion) because:
1. Clean renaming and directory removals.
2. Branches are a lot easier (than CVS).
3. Very similar commands to CVS (90% of the time they are identical) so it is easy to learn.
4. Can run within webdav so it is very secure and easy to deploy (install apache and a couple of modules).
5. Flexibility: change old log messages, can work with several external repositories at once and more.
I switched from CVS about six months ago. It was easy to make the change, and as advertised it is a far better CVS. The move, rename, delete, etc. conventions are way cool. No problems with a huge CVS import repository (with three years of history) and three active developers pounding on it. I highly recommend it.
I was interested in arch and it’s nifty distributed repository support. However arch is poorly documented (I found and reported several serious documentation bugs in a week of experimenting) and seems generally less mature than subversion. It also is written to support the fairly odd useage style of one person (TL), with weird naming conventions (e.g. documentation files named with a leading “=”) required for the “standard” usage discussed in the doc. Also, no CVS migration support.
Another project is this:
http://www.opencm.org
You might also be interested in looking at svk ( http://svk.elixus.org ). It is based on the subversion perl bindings and provides decentralized repository support and star-merge algorithm from arch.
because of the lack of plugins for the tools,
so far besides CVS and the bigger commercial ones, only svn has at least a plugin for eclipse (however which currently is
still rather bumpy)
arch and the others although, excellent projects simply fail on that level, the problem is that no version control system will achieve widespread usage, if not the 5-6 most important ides are covered by it and at least one gui standalone client for the most common platforms is available.
the reason why cvs is still that popular, althoug it has lots of shortcomings simply is, it does its jobs and the tools you need simply are there, for arch and the others it is not there.
therefore svn has currently the brightest future of them all to replace cvs in the long term, although the structure of it is kind of weird, with having to have apache as a hosting server.
although the structure of it is kind of weird, with having to have apache as a hosting server.
You can run Subversion as a stand-alone server without Apache/Webdav and access it either directly or through an ssh tunnel. There are advantages/disadvantages to both methods. stand-alone is easier to set up and faster. Apache offers more flexible authentication options and utilizes standard protocols.
I would like to see a comparation of CVS, Archi, Subversion, etc.
other than Visual SourceSafe … what is a good CVS-like server for Windows?
For a comparison of source code management systems see:
http://better-scm.berlios.de/comparison/comparison.html
“what is a good CVS-like server for Windows?”
Well, subversion with Apache. Both subversion and Apache have binaries available so it’s not that difficult to set up.
Subversion ?
You can use a windows box as a CVS server. See the page here:
http://www.cvsnt.org/wiki
I too guess Subversion is the CVS replacement project that gains the most momentum. If this is true then that’s a bit shame because I think people really should move towards a distributed architecture/private repositories model, which is adopted by arch, monotone, and darcs. Subversion still requires a central repository like CVS, and this is not the best model for open source development.