Version Control: Monotone

Subversion works well (see also TortoiseSVN). I did not see any info on the Monotone pages that would promote switching from SVN (1.3) to Monotone (.25).

Another vouch for subversion.

The advantage of Montone over subversion seems to be that monotone is serverless. Meaning: There is no central repository. If that's what you need then it looks pretty good (though you might want to check out git, which is used by the Linux kernel hackers). If you do want a central repository (CVS style) I'd go with Subversion.

I'd use Darcs.

After a quick look, Monotone seems to have built-in support for branch merging, which Subversion lacks. You can branch and merge with Subversion, but you have to remember details about merges you've performed.

I personally use Subversion + TortoiseSVN.

Quote:

Original post by mutex After a quick look, Monotone seems to have built-in support for branch merging, which Subversion lacks. You can branch and merge with Subversion, but you have to remember details about merges you've performed. I personally use Subversion + TortoiseSVN.

right, that's why I want Monotone and not subversion. I didn't like the lack of branching in CVS, and I know that subversion didn't add any. I liked the branching of Surround, but Surround is rather expensive. So, Monotone might be an answer.

The serverless design of monotone sounded interesting, but wasn't the main reason I was considering it.

As for git, I thought it was only available on *nix.

I've just recently started using Monotone for my personal projects. I previously used Subversion + TortoiseSVN for my projects and I have used CVS and Visual SourceSafe on the job.

I haven't needed to do any branching or anything yet, so I can't say much about that, but so far I'm really liking it. I really like the way the repositories work (and that it's distributed) as it made it very easy for my repositories to be included in my daily backups. It's so easy to get setup, too... bye-bye apache!

I like it and don't think I'll be going back for my own stuff. I was afraid I wasn't going to like having to use the commandline for it (I'm a lazy GUI person - gack!) but the command line interface is actually pretty nice. If I don't know a command I can find it pretty easily through the built-in help system without having to load up the website or a document.

Some other distributed source control systems that may be worth looking at Bazaar-NG and Mercurial. Both of them are behind Monotone in terms of features though (like moving/renaming files).

I think bazaar-ng is still in production.

Yeah, all three of them are. :) Just thought I'd point out some of the other options in case you hadn't come across them (or for anyone else).

Quote:

Original post by capn_midnight Quote: Original post by mutex After a quick look, Monotone seems to have built-in support for branch merging, which Subversion lacks. You can branch and merge with Subversion, but you have to remember details about merges you've performed. I personally use Subversion + TortoiseSVN. right, that's why I want Monotone and not subversion. I didn't like the lack of branching in CVS, and I know that subversion didn't add any. I liked the branching of Surround, but Surround is rather expensive. So, Monotone might be an answer.

Subversion does support branching and merging. Branching is as easy as simply making a copy. Merging can be done through the command "svn merge". At first glance it even looks a tad better than monotone. Monotone seems to be looking to a common ancestor to do a merge. Subversion supports generic three-way merging which allows merge any difference between any two sources into any target. Subversion also allows you to cherry pick merges (by simply mergin certain revisions and not certain others). Take a look at http://svnbook.red-bean.com/nightly/en/svn.branchmerge.html

Quote:

Original post by Sander Subversion does support branching and merging. Branching is as easy as simply making a copy. Merging can be done through the command "svn merge". At first glance it even looks a tad better than monotone. Monotone seems to be looking to a common ancestor to do a merge. Subversion supports generic three-way merging which allows merge any difference between any two sources into any target. Subversion also allows you to cherry pick merges (by simply mergin certain revisions and not certain others). Take a look at http://svnbook.red-bean.com/nightly/en/svn.branchmerge.html

My point is that with Subversion you have to remember revision numbers to perform merges, whereas with Monotone a merge between branches can be performed via a "propagate" command. Is this as useful as it sounds?

Quote:

Original post by mutex Quote: Original post by Sander Subversion does support branching and merging. Branching is as easy as simply making a copy. Merging can be done through the command "svn merge". At first glance it even looks a tad better than monotone. Monotone seems to be looking to a common ancestor to do a merge. Subversion supports generic three-way merging which allows merge any difference between any two sources into any target. Subversion also allows you to cherry pick merges (by simply mergin certain revisions and not certain others). Take a look at http://svnbook.red-bean.com/nightly/en/svn.branchmerge.html My point is that with Subversion you have to remember revision numbers to perform merges, whereas with Monotone a merge between branches can be performed via a "propagate" command. Is this as useful as it sounds?

Using indicative log messages for merges has worked fine so far. See also svnmerge.

Personally I found SVN to be lame - probably mainly from the shoddy TortoiseSVN front-end. I'm suprised you hated SS because front-end stuff is one of MS' strengths.
I like the ability to check out a file exclusively myself.

I'd recommend Perforce as a pretty good product. Why would you not want a central repository - you want to be able to take weekly/daily backups of it right? ('cos we all do this!)

I'd like to put in a strong vote for Perforce. It's a powerful, high-quality, complete commercial SCM package, and it's completely free for two users or less. I've been using it for over a year, and I've been more than satisfied with it. If you're looking for something to manage your personal projects, I can guarantee you're not going to find an open source system that can match what it offers.

[Edited by - Nemesis2k2 on January 30, 2006 7:53:02 AM]

I third the recommendation for Perforce. I've only been using it for a month or so but it certainly has a nice feature set and is very robust. Prior to that at another company we ran a SVN server which we also got on with very well.

I'll take another look at SVN, I suppose.

I've been reading through the monotone documentation, it's actually written very well for free software and OSS.

I'll take a look at Perforce, too.