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Re: Clear Case vs Subversion

From: Edward Q. Bridges <ebridges_at_eqbridges.com>
Date: 2005-06-08 17:02:59 CEST

Mr. Rousseau,

A year ago (almost) you wrote the below detailed comparison of Clearcase
vs. Subversion.

Here it is now almost a year later, and since you asked to be followed up
with about how much you liked it, and since someone else on the subversion
list is now asking about this comparison, and since I'm interested to
hear, would you be so kind to provide a follow up with how successful your
use was?

Thanks in advance!
Ed Bridges

cf. http://svn.haxx.se/users/archive-2004-08/0716.shtml
> ---------------------------------------
> Subject: Re: ClearCase vs. Subversion
> From: John Rousseau (JRousseau_at_novell.com)
> Date: 2004-08-12 20:09:26 CEST
>
> I've used ClearCase extensively for about 8 years, and I like it very
> much. I've only been using subversion for about 3 months. Here are my
> personal opinions, your mileage may vary. :-)
>
> Really! My opinion only. No flames please.
>
> ClearCase Pros:
> - Industrial strength
> - Excellent merge tools
> - Good GUI on Windows
> - Proven reliability
> - Scales up well
>
> ClearCase Cons:
> - Heavyweight server and client
> - Very steep learning curve for users
> - All merges are server based
> - Means you can't merge or diff without having connectivity to the
> servers
> - Merges over high latency links are SLOW
> - Very expensive
> - Weak GUI on *nix platforms
> - Server communication is RPC based (think lots of little packets) so
> anything
> over a high latency link is SLOW
> - You need to do many things the ClearCase way, not your way
> - Scales down terribly
> - High administration burden
>
> Subversion Pros:
> - Open Source (lots of interest and integrations)
> - Very lightweight server and client
> - Quick learning curve for users (until you get to merging)
> - Fast and efficient on the network
> - Flexible architechture
> - Scales down well (I don't yet know how well it scales up)
> - Lots of IDE, editor and tool integrations
> - Low administration burden
>
> Subversion Cons:
> - Open Source (developers work on what they want to)
> - Immature technology
> - Merge tracking is currently completely manual
> - Weak support for checking out part of a repository
>
> We've been using ClearCase for large-team development for years, but we
> now have a lot of remote developers and ClearCase sucks for remote users.
> It also requires a lot of administration. We evaluated Perforce, CVS,
> subversion and BitKeeper earlier this year to see if we could find
> something that was better than ClearCase with the option of staying with
> ClearCase if need be. We chose subversion. Ask me in a year when our first
> big project using subversion ships if I'm still happy with it.
>
> Devs: more than SQL support, merge tracking (which IS desperately needed)
> or any bell or whistle, you need to absolutely guarantee that people don't
> lose bits. With all the reports of repository corruption on this list (be
> it user error, act of God or bug), I don't sleep very well at night.
> "Restore from backup" is not an acceptable answer.
>
> Having said that, I'm quite happy with subversion so far.
>
> -John
>
> On Thu, 12 Aug 2004 17:20:47 +1000, Barnett, Chris
> <Chris.Barnett_at_Yum.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi list,
>>
>> I'm after a feature comparison between ClearCase and Subversion - can
>> anyone help? I've googled and googled, but all I find is 1 line mentions
>> of ClearCase in flame wars on SVN vs arch.
>>
>> TIA,
>>
>> Chris
>>
>>
>
> --
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> John Rousseau JRousseau_at_novell.com
> Novell, Inc. Phone: +1 781 464 8377
> 404 Wyman Street Fax: +1 781 464 8100
> Waltham, MA 02451 http://www.novell.com
> ----------------------------------------------------------------

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Received on Wed Jun 8 17:14:07 2005

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