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Revision of Comparing Popular Version Control Systems from Sun, 2010-04-04 09:42
Why another comparison review!!?
Perhaps becuase many of other reviews are either outdated or unfair.
What's the difference between this and the others!!?
There are three differences.
- Most of the current reviews are written by a user of one of this softwares so the author can't be fair since he has much less experience with the others, in this article however i only write about Bazaar and let the users of other DVCSs to participate and write about their favorite software.
- There are many resources available regarding to this topic and each one has pros and cons. But the main issue i have with them is that most of them are outdated because all this DVCSs are under very active development. An issue that exists now, might become a feature! few months later. So i started this article as a research project which means that just like DVCSs it's also under active development :). Anyway if you like to read resources on other sites i suggest you to check the date they've been published before relying on them. (You can subscribe to this page's RSS/Feed in order to be notices of the new updates.)
- This article is practical because it includes personal experiences from users of all these DVCSs, and challenges they've faced using them ,not only what's been written in Documentations
There are two well known type of version control systems, Centralized(Like Subversion) and Distributed(Like Git). In this article i'm not going to describe the differences between this two, however it's important to understand how they work before making any decision. This article can be a good starting point. I consider centralized VCSs an expired type of VCS so i start with comparing distributed VCSs and if you're about to start using VCSs i suggest you start with a distributed VCS. Note that distributed VCSs like Bazaar also support Centralized VCSs Workflow.
It's about the sixth years since my first commit using Subversion, Moving from CVS to Subversion was eally amazing, Subversion was superior in many ways and it served me well. But the age of centralized version control systems is over, we need much more powerful VCSs to deal with huge projects. Now days we should to be able to work with anyone, on anything, anywhere , at anytime, and also keep track of all this activities.
The age of single all-in-one solution is over in many fields including Version Control Systems, each solution has its own pros and cons and Same applies to VCSs. So in this article i'm going to compare three major DVCSs available.
My main focus on this article is Bazaar since i've decided to start (You can read why i decided to start with Bazaar at the Conclusions section) but i asked my friend Antoni who is a Mercurial(HG) user to help with all sections related to HG. Kudus to him. Currently i use whygitisbetterthanx.com site for Git but i'm also looking for Git user to share his personal experience by using Git with me. So if you're Git user i'll be more than happy to hear your opinion :)
Installation
Bazaar
Karmic :
Add this repository
for Bazaar gui
(known as bazaar explorer)
ppa:bzr-explorer-dev/ppa
If you're not using Ubuntu Karmic more information here : https://launchpad.net/~bzr-explorer-dev/+archive/ppa
sudo apt-get install bzr bzr-explorer bzr-svn
Migration
Obviously any DVCSs without proper migration utilities is useless for most projects, so lets see what each one has to offer.
Bazaar
To get started with bazaar as fast as you possible with subversion background : BzrForSVNUsers - Bazaar Version Control and Bazaar for Subversion users — Bazaar Migration Docs
You might want to have look at Migrating from Subversion to Bazaar (Including special guide for Sourceforge projects)
Note : While i was trying to migrate one of my sourceproject from svn to bzr, i came into some very nasty issue due to the difference between server and local bzr version, however bazaar developers say that in 2.x serious and upwards it's no longer a issue. bazaar supports various different tree formats which can causes lots of headaches. this command helped https://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/sourceforge/ticket/517
Performance
Bazaar
Git
Mercurial
Features
All of the major DVCSs have the important features so i'll skip the feature that are available on all of them. Also this part is mostly a respond to whygitisbetterthanx.com because it seems that the information they're providing is not accurate.
Cheap local branching
Bazaar
As far as i know Bazaar supports this feature, also it might be interesting to have a look at Filtered views — Bazaar v2.2.0dev1 documentatio
Git
According to whygitisbetterthanx.com git has this feature in a very good way!
Mercurial
Staging
Git
According to whygitisbetterthanx.com git has this feature in a very good way!
Bazaar
Bazaar has this feature but not out of the box, they only thing you need to do is creating another branch and bind you current branch to it, then commit you changes to that branch. when you're finished you can bind that branch to any branch you want and push/commit the changes! instead of directly committing your changes.
Mercurial
GUI
With lots of tools available out there , having a good GUI is getting more critical everyday and i think the main reason is because it decrease the learning curve dramatically.
Bazaar
Integration
Software development without using third-party applications and IDEs is a waste of time! So we should able to use our favoride VCS via our favorite IDE!
Bazaar
Has a plugin for Eclipse, the installation process was not as smooth as subeclipse but i can't say that it was difficult. i had to manually add the bzr binary and plugin folders location and also configure few options (All couldn't be pre configured). But according to BzrEclipse roadmap, it's going to be much better soon. number of feature is also very limited comparing to subeclipse.
Mercurial
Mercurial is much better integrated with other applications, for example currently netbeans does not support Bezaar. more information here IDEIntegration - Bazaar Version Control
Roadmap
All major DVCSs are under active development, which means that their roadmap plays an important role in the decision.
Bazaar
Bazaar roadmap And also it looks like that bazaar developers really care about their users ThreeWishes - Bazaar Version Control , Bazaar also has Bazaar Performance Roadmap
Plugins
Bazaar
Bazaar like the other three supports plugins , in my experience installing Bazaar plugins is as easy as downloading and then extracting it into the plugins folder. That's it. it's even easier even windows.
Notes
There is a nice website for comparing git vs others, very useful. Funny thing is that HG users did the same! but made their point quite clear! Also Git users made another one for Bazaar!
There is also another website for comparing Bazaar and Git , they approach is interesting and it's based on personal experience using Tweeter! http://www.bzrvsgit.com/
Conclusions
In this part you can read the main reasons that people use particular
Bazaar
I decided to start with Bazaar for several reasons
- It's written with python and for this reason it's much easier to extend and develop than C or C++.
- It's a multi purpose VCS covering several different Use Cases (Workflows)
- It's plugin system is quite easy to use (With no compiling or building process)
- It comes with several great cross platform GUI utilities
News
More and more software and developers are migrating to DVCSs, here you can read their favorite DVCSs
- 2010-2-x : Drupal.org's infrastructure team has finally decided to use Git instead of Bazaar. I read most of the comments there which was extremely useful. But the reason they chosed Git was mostly because of the number of people willing to help. So i can say that Git community is very active. Evaluation discussion for how to move Drupal.org off of CVS | groups.drupal.org
Resources
- BzrExplorer - Bazaar Version Control
- Distributed revision control - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Workflows — Bazaar v2.1.1 documentation
- Bazaar Explorer PPA : “Bazaar Explorer Developers” team
- Publishing a branch — Bazaar v2.0.5 documentation
- Bazaar Explorer PPA : “Bazaar Explorer Developers” team
- testrunner - Run a command before allowing a commit — Bazaar v2.0.x documentation
- xmloutput - XML interface for external tool integration — Bazaar v2.0.x documentation
- Bazaar Explorer in Launchpad
- SvnDump 0.5.0
- Repository Maintenance
- Dump and load foreign subversion repositories using svnadmin and svndumpfilter, Nuxeo Developers Blog
- svn2bzr - Bazaar Version Control
- Bazaar for Subversion users — Bazaar Migration Docs
- BzrForSVNUsers - Bazaar Version Control
- Tutorials/CentralizedWorkflow - Bazaar Version Control
- IDEIntegration - Bazaar Version Control
- assert(♥) - git equivalent to “svn copy” for forking files with history?
- Using Bazaar on Subversion projects — Bazaar Migration Docs
- Comparison of revision control software - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Comments
SourceForge's outdated bzr
Unfortunately your issues with Bazaar seem to be caused by the fact that SourceForge is still running an old version of Bazaar. The format issues all have been resolved as of Bazaar 2.0.
Thanks Jelmer for the
Thanks Jelmer for the tip.
Yes i noticed that after playing with Bazaar for a while. Unfortunately i have to stick with Sourceforge's old Bazaar :(, i hope they upgrade to v2 soon.
I manged to convert one of my projects to Bazaar successfully and i'm writing an easy migration guide for Sourceforge's svn users.
I can't use anything but git
I can't use anything but git cause it's a nightmare to migrate or start another VCS learning curves. I still have second thoughts about Bazaar. btw never heared of directory track feature.
quite useful
Thanks jelmer
Excellent post....I really appreciate this site & thank you so much sharing with us.