I don't hate ClearCase. I don't know enough about it to hate it. But I have a professional SCM friend who swears by it, so I need to withhold judgement.
I also agree with Matt that you need to look at what your challenge is. Know what I do at home? For most uses, I make a RCS subdirectory and ci/co on the tip to get roll back and comments. Period. If I needed to do something where directory structures or code might be critical or refactored, or where I had aspirations of code reuse, then I'd go to svn or learn mercurial/git. Also, p4 has a free (beer) license of OSS projects. But, in a professional setting where I was asked what to do, I would make damn sure everyone knew my opinion of svn's limitations before I put my fingerprints on it. Too easy to catch the blame when it comes up short. On Wed, October 24, 2007 5:32 pm, MattyJ wrote: > I echo what Lan says for the most part, especially the part about doing a > critical analysis. Your organization might have different needs (all > Microsoft? All *nix?), philosophies, needs for process built in, etc. > > The places I have worked have mostly been early on in their implementation > of any type of development process, so low-weight/agile tools were a must. > Perforce has won out twice for me. As Lan said, it's fast, it's > extensible, hackable and pretty much does exactly one thing and does it > very well. For source control tools that cost money, it's relatively cheap > (about $800 per seat at present, I believe.) > > I hate to make Lan bristle, but I worked at a place where ClearCase was > forced upon us. After some animosity I grew to like it to an extent. We > had six different offices scattered throughout the globe that contributed > to our code base and ClearCase excelled and managing all the disperate > pieces. It's also pretty much bulletproof when it comes to availability, > quality, etc., and it scales to a massive size. If I was hired by Motorola > to unify their source control/CM functions, I'd seriously consider > ClearCase (assuming cost is not a factor, it is very pricey, thousands of > dollars per seat.) It has some drawbacks but as I said, if you have 5000 > developers scattered across the globe ClearCase is the gold standard in > enterprise source control management. > > And to echo what Lan said earlier and to bring the conversation full > circle, I have nothing against Svn, under the right circumstances. I use > it at home for personal things, but I have no need for branching, merging > or even labeling. It suits me well. I have a buddy who owns a small > consultancy firm (five people) and they use a hosted Svn implementation > and are extremely happy with it. But again, it's more of a set of > individual worspaces where they don't need to branch or merge or share > anything. I think Svn is a solid piece of software in and of itself that > has the *potential* to be enterprise-ready. It's just the lack of a few > good features that medium to large shops would need (even if they don't > realize it yet) that would keep me from implementing it in a bigger > business. Lastly, alluding again to Lan's comments, as with any tool there > is a learning curve and certain admin overhead. The non 'out of the box' > nature of Svn, Cvs, git, etc. is a turnoff for a lot of people. > > One final note, and people sometimes think I'm nuts when I say this, being > the OSS advocate that I am, but I don't use open source software because > it's free (as in beer or as in freedom), I use it because some of it is > better. I use a certain amount of commercial software at home because it's > simply better. I'd like to be 100% OSS all the time, but sometimes I just > need my damn iPod to work correctly. Or my wife just needs her web pages > to display. She couldn't care less that Microsoft is evil, and that the > flash player for Linux is prone to crashing, but you're being a good > person by not running windows. Sometimes things just need to work and I'm > willing to pay for that. > > So in the long run, if Svn or anything else OSS was better than Perforce > for my professional situation I'd (try to) change to it in a second. You > have to ask yourself how much you're willing to sacrifice in time/effort > vs monetary cost of these things. > > > -Matt > > > On Wed, 24 Oct 2007 13:52:41 -0700, Lan Barnes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> I'd recommend doing a formal tool search. Get a project manager who >> knows >> how to do a tool search and a professional SCM analyst with broad >> experience. Make a list of candidates and by all means, put svn and >> other >> OSS tools on the list. Derive user needs and requirements. Get the input >> of all stakeholders and whatever regulatory specialists you have. Expand >> the horizons to include issue traching, perhaps project management >> tools, >> etc. >> >> There is a wide number of commercial and OSS tools in the arena with >> different design philosophies. ClearCase and Dimensions have built in >> process (with some flexibility), which is great if you need that >> process, >> not so great if it chafes. Perforce allows you to script damn near >> anything, but that cost and time are on your head, and you have to >> support >> it, too. >> >> Obviously budget is in the mix, and don't neglect the cost of >> customization, internal training, support contracts, consultants, >> external >> trainers, and maintenance. >> >> If your needs are simple and your process is unsophisticated, maybe svn >> would work just fine. But we all know that OSS isn't "free." Not if your >> time has any value. >> >> I don't think that there is one best of breed. I'm pretty happy with p4 >> at >> work, but it's easy to abuse and become a time sink as well. Our present >> system at work is IMO so deficient in process discipline as to be a >> negative influence on good SCM practices. It's not important how we got >> there, we're just there (and no sign of it getting better). And it's not >> p4's fault at all. >> >> Finally, to do good SCM needs the enlightened commitment of upper >> management. And the real enemy of good SCM is middle management, >> especially development. Actual developers, once they've worked with good >> SCM, want it badly and are real champions of SCM. But middle managers >> see >> it as a threat to their making schedule (it actually helps) and always >> want to control it so they can throw it overboard during crunch time, >> which is when they need control most. >> >> Show me a shop where SCM is under Development and/or assigned as a 50% >> job >> to one developer on each team, and I'll show you a fsck'd up place. >> >> Others may weigh in with different opinions. I don't pretend to know >> everything about the field, and am forming new opinions every day. But I >> have been doing it for a while, and I've gotten to learn from some >> really >> sharp people. >> >> BTW, I'm BCC'ing a few geek friends on this thread who aren't >> necessarily >> dialed into Kplug (like Matt). Maybe some of them will have input for me >> to pass along. >> >> On Wed, October 24, 2007 12:06 pm, Bob La Quey wrote: >>> So what would you, Matt or Lan, recommend for an "Enterprise Level" >>> SCM? >> And why? >>> >>> What does such a thing cost? >>> >>> BobLQ >>> >>> >>> -- >>> [email protected] >>> http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list >>> >> >> > > > -- Lan Barnes SCM Analyst Linux Guy Tcl/Tk Enthusiast Biodiesel Brewer -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
