I used StarTeam once, and that was enough to convince me not to take
any more StarTeam jobs.
The biggest issue to me is the scripting abilities of StarTeam. You
are suppose to be able to script StarTeam except that the command line
interface is almost impossible to use and is extremely limited. Every
command from the command line must contain the user name, password,
instance, and system -- about 80 characters worth of information.
After doing all that, the output was almost impossible to parse and
the commands that you could run were extremely limited.
There was suppose to be a Unix version, but lo, that ended up being
just the clunky command line interface! On Windows, in the GUI, the
"status" indicators were never accurate. Files that were never edited
were showing up as "updated". Files that needed to be updated were
showing as current. Files that were added weren't always included in
the view.
We also found the defect tracking system pretty useless. We couldn't
add a field we needed although we were told it was possible. They
forgot to tell us that the ability was only in the deluxe version and
not the version we were sold. But, for just a few thousand dollars
more, we could upgrade!
I used Subversion since revision 1.1, and found it much, much easier
to use. Of course, I am a command line geek, so I appreciate the easy
to use command line client. However, TortoiseSVN is an excellent
Windows client. There are a few features I wish Subversion had. It
doesn't really have the concept of tagging (Tags in Subversion are
just branches), and the URL make it more complex than it needs to be
to do branch comparison. It also doesn't allow the complete removal of
files or versions which can be an issue in certain environments.
Hits:
* Lots of third party tools.
* Server administration is easy to do.
* Cost (Free)
* Documentation is excellent.
* Flexible setup allows you to use an Apache server and LDAP to
connect to your Windows login server.
* Hooks allow you to stop commits to the repository before commit
takes place.
* Properties allow you to easily set special file attributes and behavior.
* Repository revisioning allows you to drop the daily build labels.
* Branching and tagging is almost instantaneous, and it's cheap.
Misses:
* Really needs the ability to tag even if tag is just an alias to
revision number.
* Can be slow on Windows with virus protection on.
* Complex URL scheme makes diffing between branches or tags difficult.
* Properties are unsearchable. You can't say "Find me the revision
with this property on it.
* No easy way to remove history of either an entire file in the
repository or a set of revisions.
* Merging and merge tracking ability is still a bit weak.
If your company doesn't mind spending money, you might want to also
look at Perforce too. Perforce is about $800 per user per license, but
I personally like better. It's much faster than Subversion at many
operations, has true tagging, and its merging capabilities are far
superior than Subevrsion's. Perforce's email list has excellent
support, and their phone support is top rate.
Whether or not Perforce is $800 per user per license better is another
question.
To be fair, here are somethings Subversion gets right over Perforce:
* Subversion's properties scheme work better than Perforce's filetype scheme.
* Subversion commands use correct exit codes while Perforce's commands
always return a zero. You need to run a second command to see whether
or not the command actually worked (or use the API).
* Perforce doesn't track directory moves or renames (except in a
branching concept). If you move a file to a different directory,
delete a file, or rename a file in one branch, but not in another, you
have to manually modify the "branch type".
* Perforce uses the concept of changelists, so when you edit a file,
you have to "mark it" as edited in a particular changelist before you
actually modify the file. Plus, the whole view concept can be quite
tricky for developers to understand.
On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 3:43 PM, <webpost_at_tigris.org> wrote:
> We are moving away from StarTeam. Each upgrade got more difficult to do. It was as if Borland didn't really want you to do the upgrade instead of paying them to do it. After we almost pried an upgrade procedure from them for 2008 MSDE from 2005 R2 MSDE we discovered some bugs during our upgrade test. The show stopper was that the update status would sometimes not be able to resloved a freshly checked out file to a current status. SVN is the new tool around here we are looking to move to.
>
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>
> To unsubscribe from this discussion, e-mail: [users-unsubscribe_at_subversion.tigris.org].
>
--
David Weintraub
qazwart_at_gmail.com
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Received on 2009-05-18 19:07:00 CEST