Most people reading this news article will already be using a version control tool of some description, if not, stop reading this, go and download Subversion, Mercurial or Git and start using it asap, then come back and finish reading this.
Clearvision has spent over 12 years working with Commercial version control vendors and their customers. In the past two years, accelerated by the recession, we have assisted companies in migration from vendor tools to open source version control solutions (or the creation of an integrated, hybrid solution) such as Subversion, Mercurial and Git.
There are three major contributors to the shift towards open source version control;
Quality and speed of development for open source tools
Features and functionality which make them viable for the majority of companies and requirements
Demands to move software development teams to a truly geographically distributed development environment
As well as advising customers around the SCCM market, Clearvision spend much of our time listening to the needs of our customers. This significant shift to open source has brought with it challenges not recognised by many CM administrators, after all this is a major change to supporting a tool which is used by thousands of developers across multiple development locations. A "big bang" migration is simply not viable, even when applied to smaller projects.
Migrating from established tools such as Rational ClearCase is not without its challenges and hidden costs, however once migrated none of our customers have asked to move back... especially the accounting departments who are no longer paying ongoing maintenance costs. Migration from an established, legacy SCCM solution to an open source solution such as Subversion, Mercurial or Git might be a long process, Clearvision have established integrated, hybrid solutions where typically new teams use an open source tool of their choice (either Subversion, Mercurial or Git) and share their code with the central Rational ClearCase repository (through an "invisible" sychronisation tool)... CC2SVN or CC2Git help make migrating or sharing code simple, fast and most importantly they help you reduce license costs.
The SCCM market talks a lot about "collaborating" development team members however, there a few true collaboration tools available on the market. Clearvision spent considerable time investigating the collaboration tools and options and quickly realised Intland CodeBeamer was the only product which fulfilled customer demands. Although your agenda might be to cut vendor costs entirely, those who have invested in CodeBeamer have seen a complete return on investment within a few months.
Useful hints;
- www.intland.com – CodeBeamer
- http://www.clearvision-cm.com/products/index.html - list of value add SVN & Git tools
Clearvision offer Subversion Support, Subversion Training, Subversion Consulting and Subversion Products.
Mercurial Support, Mercurial Training, Mercurial Consulting and Mercurial Products.
Git Support, Git Training, Git Consulting and Git Products.
Contact us for more information. |
For some time Clearvision have been advising client to use Apache as their Subversion server in preference to svnserve.
Traditionally svnserve did not offer full data encryption, password files were plain text files and there was no logging of activity so you could not check who was breaking into your system, there was no option but to recommend Apache.
This was a shame because svnserve is fast... very fast. Svnserve is purpose built and uses a custom protocol for network communciation but Apache uses the http protocols WebDav/DelatV extension and WebDav/DelatV which was not designed for the multi-file transactions that are Subversions bread and butter.
With industrial strength encryption for svnserve introduced in SVN 1.5 through SASL and server logging in SVN 1.6 Clearvision is finally able to recommend svnserve as a viable alternative for commercial organisations. SVN 1.5 svnserve came built with SASL and can now do more or less anything that Apache can do regards encryption and integration with Authentication/Authorisation systems e.g. You can now send fully encrypted data and logins accross the network based on LDAP authentication and Subversion authorisation.
SVN 1.6 is available and svnserve now has logging, this is really good news! Not only can you now lock the Subversion house with svnserve but we can put the svnserve logging system in as a watchman.
The jury is still out on the quality of the svnverve logging - it needs air time, and as of yet it is not fully documented, but watch this space, once this feature has proved itself svnserve will have made significant steps forward.
So, if the logging is as good as we hope it will be is Apache dead and gone? Should all customers convert to svnserve? The answer is "No, not all of you...". If you want to utilise proxy-write through slaves to create writeable slaves around the globe you may still need to use Apache (you may find direct svnserve access is faster). If you use Apaches WebDav capability to publish the latest versions of code directly 1.6 now allows you to now to also view old versions of code without a client so you may also wish to keep an Apache based server parallel to svnserve to enable clientless read-only access.
In short once the new logging feature of svnserve has proven itself, you may want to consider using it for speed alone. |
The Jazz community have announced the release of IBM Rational Team Concert version 1.0.1.1.
This version will be of significant interest for Microsoft .NET developers. The focus of this version has been to extend the RTC team collaboration component to include compatibility with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and 2008. This means that customers can now reduce their costs with a single repository for both .NET and J2EE platforms.
This release of Rational Team Concert also supports cross-platform team collaboration with integrated common work items, source code management and builds. It may be worth noting that Rational Team Concert 1.0.1.1 now also provides support for thirteen native languages.
To learn more about Rational Team Concert or for Rational Team Concert Training, Support and RTC Consulting please contact Clearvision. |
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