From: "Gregg N" 

Adam wrote:
> Ye olde CVS
> Subversion
> Visual Source Safe

Visual Source Safe is easy to use, but it does not handle complicated
branching or merging requirements well. It is also not client/server based,
so the repository is at the mercy of each individual development computer
reading from or writing to it. There have been reports of VSS data
corruption, no doubt due to this arrangement. We used it for a couple of
years without any problem, however.

CVS and Subversion are client/server based, and are better than VSS at
managing branching and merging, but neither one currently supports merge
tracking whereby the tool keeps track of what merges you have already
applied.

> Any others which should be on the list?

We have decided to switch to Perforce (www.perforce.com). Perforce is
cross-platform (both server and client) and has full branch and merge
support. It also supports change sets (so your check-ins can be associated
with a particular issue or feature) and atomic check-ins (with which a set
of files gets checked in all or nothing). It also has a proxy server to
support development at remote sites. You can download an evaluation version
for Windows, Linux, etc. from their web site. It is fully functional except
that it only supports two users.

If you want a free tool, based on what I've read, I would choose subversion
over CVS. It was designed as a replacement for CVS, and supports the same
development models ias CVS. It also adds a few capabilities that were
missing from CVS (I think renames and deletions). There are GUI front-ends
that make it easy to use, and integrate it with Windows Explorer. There is
also GNU Arch, which is a distributed system I think like BitKeeper is, but
I think it runs (well) only on Linux.

There are other expensive, more sophisticated tools such as ClearCase and BitKeeper.

Gregg

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