[cvsnt] CVSNT and Subversion

Arthur Barrett arthur.barrett at march-hare.com
Wed Mar 22 05:46:38 GMT 2006



See here:
http://march-hare.com/cvspro/svn.htm

Also:
http://march-hare.com/cvsnt/features/cvsnt/

SVN does not have changesets like perforce but CVSNT does (the commit id
in cvsnt and svn is not the same as a changeset id which is user
assigned and can occur many times):
http://march-hare.com/cvsnt/features/bugzilla/

The need to rename/move files could be argued is a weakness in your
control, not a weakness in the tool.  ClearCase does not allow
non-administrators to rename or move files - it's seen as a rare
administrator only initiated action.  And noone is criticising ClearCase
for it.

CVSNT 2.6 has a new engine which has fast tags and directory versioning
as well as rename/move, but that wont be stable for a few more weeks.

By comparison SVN hasn't even listed when they'll add true rename, or
mergepoints or any of the features that CVSNT has had for years (like
ACL's):
http://subversion.tigris.org/roadmap.html

Also with CVSNT you are using something that is actively developed and
is stable, as opposed to SVN whose ability to corrupt its own repository
(and not just the btree one) is well documented.

A reliable audit facility such as in CVSNT (with client side fail if the
audit fails) is essential for SOX compliance and besides is simply good
business practice.  It also allows you to generate your own reports on
activity by developer, activity by component and to spot irregular
activity.

Analyst firms like CMI say that implementing CM has a cost to it
(overheads) and that most organisations believe that the benefits of
implementing CM (quality, productivity) outweigh the cost of the
overheads.  However research has shown that unless the tool ensures the
integrity of all managed items and makes the interrelationships clear
and the evolution of those items more manageable, those benefits do not
materialise.

SVN cannot ensure integrity (audit), and cannot link the feature request
from your customer/sponsor, to the fucntional spec changes, to the test
set changes to the project plan changes to the actual code changes.
That is the function of a change set id (which is why it needs to be
user defined).  You can implement your own drill down, or (shameless
plug) buy our own Bugzilla integraition.  But the actual ability to
nominate change set id's/bug id's is in the CVSNT core.

Finally CVSNT has commercial support at a fraction of the cost of
collabnet.

I had discussions previously with some of the folks at OpenTV, and they
were also quite interested in repository replication.  That's another
thing you can't do on SVN.  Repository replication is built into the
core of CVSNT 2.5.03, and it will be extended in CVSNT 2.6 later this
year.

Regards,


Arthur Barrett




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