Re: CVS Pros/Cons

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Thursday, February 12, 2004 at 12:57:11 (+0000), Brian Murphy wrote: ]
> Subject: CVS Pros/Cons
>
> Weaknesses of CVS:
> 
> There is no integrity-checking for the source-code
> repository. Amazingly, there are no checksums or
> signatures to allow the integrity of the source-code
> repository to be verified. This means that the
> repository can become corrupt and it can be months
> before you realize it. This has never happened to me,
> but it is imperative that you back up the repository
> to permanent storage (burn CD-Roms) regularly because
> of this danger.

This is a weakness of all RCS-based revision tracking systems, including
of course RCS itself.  This is rarely a problem when robust secure
computing platforms are used to host such systems.  Don't use broken
systems else you'll end up with corruption in far more than just your
RCS files.

> Check-outs and commits are not atomic.

This is rarely a problem in practice.

> CVS manages revisions on a file-by-file basis.

Well, yes, and no.  This is a feature.  :-)

> You can
> apply "tags" to mark revisions across a whole project,
> but there is very little support for dealing with a
> project as a whole.

CVS is not a project management tool -- don't expect it to do project
management tasks for you.


> CVS has very poor support for distributed source
> control (maintaining several different repositories
> and keeping them synchronized with one another.

This is also a feature.  CVS provides a central repository model, which
is highly desirable for certain styles of distributed development.

> CVS is oriented towards text files.

This is most definitely a very important feature, and it's a feature of
all revision tracking systems based on the likes of RCS and SCCS and
anything else using diffutils to calculate and merge file deltas.

> Security is a bit spotty unless you either: (a) have a
> Windows NT or 2K CVS server and only WinNT or 2K CVS
> clients; or (b) have a Unix cvs server.

This is also a feature -- CVS is not a security tool!  Use Unix+SSH!!!!

> It is a bit difficult to learn about the myriad of
> configuration files that control CVS's behavior.

This must be called a feature too.

> The
> official manual (by Per Cederqvist) is a bit out of
> date

No its not.  Not at all.  CVS is quite a mature program.

> so sometimes it's necessary to ask on the
> mailing lists or look in FAQs about behavior that
> seems a bit strange.

This is a feature of all free software.

All non-free software has the same problem, often to a much higher
degre, but the only solution with it is to ask the (usually lone) vendor
for help.

-- 
                                                Greg A. Woods

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