Expanding My Source Control Horizons.

I have really enjoyed using SourceGear's Vault source control server for all my personal development needs for quite a while and I have been nothing but happy with them, I need to expand my horizons.

What I really like about SourceGear, aside from their excellent products, is that they seem to really get how to cater to the small, independent software developer. By providing a free single-user license they put themselves within reach of the developer who could not otherwise afford their product. They also are owned by an individual who really seems to know how to communicate with developers on their level. Through his blog about the daily issues of his software firm and excellent book, Business of Software, which I own and recommend picking up. Also, they support developers desire to extend their products with an automation API and a set of NAnt extensions.

But comfort breeds complacency. I need to try new stuff and see what's out there.

The world of source control tools has seen a surge of growth and even better, competition over the past couple years. The list of actively developed source controls tools, that are within the reach of a mere mortal developer, has grown tremendously and the choices are all very attractive.

So, I've decided to play around with a couple vendors that have licenses that appeal to me. So here's a brief description of what I want in terms of features and licensing.

Cheap, or at least reasonably priced, since I'm not writing packaged software for sale at this point, I'd like a vendor who has discounted licenses for open-source software developers and teams. I like to constantly merge/check-in my code to the repository so having to break flow by leaving the comfort of VS.Net is not desirable. Also, I don't like having to memorize the command-line utility, I am a GUI brat and although I've worked with services and console apps for years I prefer managing the server via some form of GUI, web-based or standalone application doesn't matter. There also needs to be the ability to integrate with CruiseControl.NET and NAnt. Also, labeling needs to be easy, branching and merging of branches should be simple operations. The creation of repositories and working structures needs to be painless. Checkins needs to be atomic and transactional, individual pieces of changelists need to be easily rolled back and commit failures cannot corrupt the repository.

I know that my needs are very MSDevcentric. Hey, it's my list, if you want stuff for whatever platform you work in then that's your wish-list. So basing my requirements off that list I've looked around and have picked a couple tools that I am going to evaluate and report on before I decide whether to just stick with Vault or begin using another tool for my everyday use.

• Perforce

  Very attractive open-source developer friendly licensing. An excellent book that covers Perforce as a tool is The Build Master which I own and have read.



• Subversion

  CollabNet binaries, can't beat the license, FREE! I don't own this one yet but will be ordering it from Amazon. Version Control with Subversion



• Visual Source Safe 6/2005

  From personal and painful experience, "Blech". I inherited it at my job but it's better than everyone working off a shared folder.



• SourceGear Vault

  What I currently use, but will list it's merits. Vault is also covered in Coder to Developer, which I read cover-to-cover but then gave away as a gift to an excellent Agilist developer when he moved on to another company. Also, I think it's where I first heard about Vault.



• Team Server

  I love me some CodePlex, best place for MS-based OSS projects I know of but I'm going to focus on the SCM aspect.



• Surround SCM

  The current likely candidate for replacing VSS at work.

As I work through the different tools for the next couple weeks I'll update on my experiences using those tools in my day-to-day development tasks.