As a development team, we have decided (well, I guess officially, I have decided) to go with Subversion as our version control system, as opposed to using Visual Studio Team System. We had previously used VSTS, and the locking method of source control just did not work for us. We much prefer the methodology that Subversion uses, namely modify-merge, rather than lock. It just makes more sense!
We’re using TortoiseSVN as our client and so far, I’m very impressed with it’s ease of use and the ability to have it do the things we want to do.
We had to come to grips with the terminology (Commit, Merge, Update, Diff, Import, etc.) and thanks to the free e-Book Version Control with Subversion we have been well educated. I have to say though, why can’t Microsoft get this? Why does VSTS have to be:
- so difficult to administer?
- so cumbersome to use on a daily basis in a team setup?
- based on the lock methodology, which seems counterproductive to the idea of collaborative development?
It seems they could learn a ton from this open source project. Oh well, either way, we’ll use Subversion, enjoy it, and get more done.
BTW, we’re looking at VisualSVN for integration with Visual Studio 2008. I’ve played with the demo, but part of me just doesn’t see paying for what we can do in the filesystem for free. Ideas/thoughts?