I'd recommend doing a formal tool search. Get a project manager who knows how to do a tool search and a professional SCM analyst with broad experience. Make a list of candidates and by all means, put svn and other OSS tools on the list. Derive user needs and requirements. Get the input of all stakeholders and whatever regulatory specialists you have. Expand the horizons to include issue traching, perhaps project management tools, etc.
There is a wide number of commercial and OSS tools in the arena with different design philosophies. ClearCase and Dimensions have built in process (with some flexibility), which is great if you need that process, not so great if it chafes. Perforce allows you to script damn near anything, but that cost and time are on your head, and you have to support it, too. Obviously budget is in the mix, and don't neglect the cost of customization, internal training, support contracts, consultants, external trainers, and maintenance. If your needs are simple and your process is unsophisticated, maybe svn would work just fine. But we all know that OSS isn't "free." Not if your time has any value. I don't think that there is one best of breed. I'm pretty happy with p4 at work, but it's easy to abuse and become a time sink as well. Our present system at work is IMO so deficient in process discipline as to be a negative influence on good SCM practices. It's not important how we got there, we're just there (and no sign of it getting better). And it's not p4's fault at all. Finally, to do good SCM needs the enlightened commitment of upper management. And the real enemy of good SCM is middle management, especially development. Actual developers, once they've worked with good SCM, want it badly and are real champions of SCM. But middle managers see it as a threat to their making schedule (it actually helps) and always want to control it so they can throw it overboard during crunch time, which is when they need control most. Show me a shop where SCM is under Development and/or assigned as a 50% job to one developer on each team, and I'll show you a fsck'd up place. Others may weigh in with different opinions. I don't pretend to know everything about the field, and am forming new opinions every day. But I have been doing it for a while, and I've gotten to learn from some really sharp people. BTW, I'm BCC'ing a few geek friends on this thread who aren't necessarily dialed into Kplug (like Matt). Maybe some of them will have input for me to pass along. On Wed, October 24, 2007 12:06 pm, Bob La Quey wrote: > So what would you, Matt or Lan, recommend for an "Enterprise Level" SCM? And why? > > What does such a thing cost? > > BobLQ > > > -- > [email protected] > http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list > -- Lan Barnes SCM Analyst Linux Guy Tcl/Tk Enthusiast Biodiesel Brewer -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
