[lug] Revision Control System?

[Aaron D. Johnson]

Jose Castilleja writes:
> I am looking to setup a revision control system for my software
> engineers.  Before I start testing, I wanted to see what people's
> thoughts were.  git?  Subversion?  something else?  Please...all
> opinions welcome.

I'd recommend having a discussion with your software engineers to get
a good understanding of their needs and a feel for what they may
already like.  Without providing a tool that fits their needs, you're
going to find yourself fighting with the developers.  Just because
git, mercurial, subversion, bazaar, and perforce get a lot of press,
doesn't mean they're the best fit for your organization.

There are a lot of tools out there.  Wikipedia has a long list of
candidates at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_revision_control_software.
Another long list of distributed tools can be found at
http://aegis.sourceforge.net/propaganda/diversity.html.  And
http://www.cmyellowpages.com/ was a terrific resource for revision
control and related topics when I last looked at it.

Some possibly important questions (in no particular order):
- Are developers working remotely?
- Do we need a tool with a vibrant community?
- Do we need a tool with vendor support?
- Do we need cryptographic security of our source tree(s)?
- Do we need fancy GUI tools?
- Do we need fancy reporting capabilities?
- Do we need fancy web tools?
- Do we need something that enforces a development process?
- How do we manage code from foreign projects?
- How much can we afford to pay?
- What platforms are we doing development on?
- What tools are we already familiar with?

That said, my personal favorite tool is Aegis
(http://aegis.sourceforge.net/).  It's a good fit for me, but I know
others take a look at it and feel like vomiting.  It's a lot heavier
weight than most other products in this space.  And I use it for
relatively few projects -- I'm not a programmer.

(If anyone is interested, I could do a bit of spiel about it.)

- Aaron