In article <2644d0de-9a81-41aa-b27a-cb4535964...@googlegroups.com>, cutems93 <ms2...@cornell.edu> wrote:
> Thank you everyone for such helpful responses! Actually, I have one more > question. Does anybody have experience with closed source version control > software? If so, why did you buy it instead of downloading open source > software? Does closed source vcs have some benefits over open source in some > part? This really doesn't have anything to do with python. Someplace like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_version_control_systems would be a good starting point for further research. If I were to buy a closed-source VCS today, I would look at Perforce (www.perforce.com). I used it for several years. For small teams, you can download and use it for free, so you can play with it without commitment. Perforce tries to solve a somewhat larger problem than just version control. They also do configuration management. You can set up a config-spec which says, "Give me this bunch of files from branch A, that bunch of files from branch B, and some third bunch of files which have some specific tag. And, while you're at it, remap the path names so the directory structure looks like I want it to". This configuration management can be a powerful tool when working on a huge project. We threw *everything* into our p4 repo, including the all the compilers, development toolchains, and pre-built binaries for all the third-party libraries we used. We also used a single repo shared by all the development groups (many 100's of developers on three continents). I would never want to do that in a system like git or hg; every developer would have to drag down 100's of GB of crap they didn't need. With p4, we could build people config-specs so they got just the parts they needed. It is also a bit of a steep learning curve to figure out. Only a few people were trusted to do things like build config-specs and create shared branches. As a company, Perforce is a dream to work with. Their tech support was pretty awesome. I would shoot off an email to supp...@perforce.com, and I don't think it ever took more than 5 or 10 minutes for me to get a response back from somebody. And that somebody would inevitably be somebody who knew enough to solve my problem, not just some first-line support drone. The costs aren't outrageous, either. The pricing is a little complicated (initial license, annual renewal, various support options, of them on a sliding scale based on quantity). I seem to remember it working out to about $100/developer/year for us, but we were buying in fairly large quantities. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
