[prog] VSS to CVS -- looking for experiences and argumentation help

[Jimen Ching]

On Fri, 23 Apr 2004, Rasjid Wilcox wrote:
>In practice, there have never been any problems with the lack of a 'locked'
>checkout.  In fact, there is no way I would voluntarily move to a 'single
>user locks whole file' system, since my co-worker and I frequently do work on
>the same module/file (mostly this is Visual Basic) at the same time.  As long
>as both of use are not editing the same *procedure* at the same time, it all
>works very very well, and it would slow down development considerably if only
>one of us could work in a given module at any given time.

I have to agree with Rasjid on this one.  I've used MKS, ClearCase, and
CVS.  Both MKS and ClearCase use the file locking mechanism.  And in both
cases, many software engineers just get an 'unreserved' lock on the file.
This simply bypasses any benefits of locking.  Preventing multiple
developers to edit the same file is no way to develop software.

I have to also mention that file locking is the least important issue in
choosing a software configuration management (SCM) system.  I write
software about 8 hours a day.  Commiting changes to SCM is about 2% of my
day to day work.  What I do the other 98% of the time are:

1.  Design and implementation.
2.  Tracking down defects.
3.  Preparing for release (finding out what changes were made).

To do these tasks, you need an SCM that can do:

1.  Diffs of an entire tree by date and/or label.
2.  History of checkins for the entire tree.
3.  3-way diffs and merges.
4.  Branching and merging.
5.  Generating a 'changelog'.

Of the three tool, ClearCase is the worst.  The most basic operations are
not available.  Unless you use this concept of UCM, forget about branching
and merging.  Of course, that costs extra.

MKS is better.  But to generate history and logs, you have to write Access
database scripts.  Or use what they provide, which isn't very useful.

CVS provides all of these.  Though they are not as easy to use.  But I'd
prefer a difficult tool that does what I want than an easy tool that
doesn't.

Anyone who chooses an SCM based on file locking features is either
spreading FUD or are victims of it.

--jc
-- 
Jimen Ching (WH6BRR)      jching at flex.com     wh6brr at uhm.ampr.org