Asset Tracking

Have you considered Subversion?

What specifically is wrong with CVS for this? My project at work uses CVS to store binary files, with no problems. My intention is not to flame but to better understand the shortcomings of CVS in this regard.

Thanks...

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"Set Phasers to neuter..."
"2+2=5 for sufficiently large values of 2."


[edited by - roger_hq on January 26, 2004 3:57:05 PM]

CVS really isn''t so adept at serving the purpose of binary assets, especially art ones such as sound effects, music, textures, models. The reason for this is what CVS (and Subversion) are targeted to be: Source Control Systems. They keep the source for a project in a central location and its history.

Sounds ok. But this isn''t all you need for binary file stuff. CVS especially (subversion''s a bit better), since it isn''t atomic. But say your artists want to keep two versions of the same texture at the same time, because they''re experimenting to see which one''s best and haven''t fully decided yet. They want it to have the same file name, but have two (or multiple) versions concurrently in repository. Traditional source control systems simply aren''t suitable.

Not so sure about that one, but it might be somewhat true with CVS. Could be utterly wrong though, I leave that option open. Subversion''s newer, but yeah, they''re both really optimized for text.

The problem with CVS and binnary data is that CVS doesn''t support diffs for binary files thus needing to keep a copy of every checked in version instead of saving only the differences like it does for text files.
Thus the required space can grow rapidly as it is proportional to number of commits instead of amount of changes. A 1 MB file committed 10x with one byte changed each time will consume 10 MB on the server. This is something subversion does better.

For more details, see http://subversion.tigris.org/ and http://www.cvshome.org and this for info about CVS and binary data.

Jan Rehders aka sheijk. Velox3D programmer at 6S

Subversion docs also indicate that it only transmits what has changed, which an be a substantial timesavings in some cases.

I am a happy Subversion user now who uses it locally.

I think bitkeeper may deal well with binaries, but there are strict licensing rules that dictate whether you pay for a license or are eligible for the free license.

www.bitmover.com

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