Wow, thanks, never used any of those applications but I will certainly check out some of those. Thanks.

My favorite GUI SVN Client is SmartSVN. Cross platform and easy to use. The compare tool is one of the best I’ve seen.

I used to use svn with Versions, but I can’t really say I enjoyed the experience. If you’re not afraid of terminal, I’d recommend you give Git a try. Once you have figured out how to set it up, it’s a breeze to use.

I’ve recently switched over to Mercurial (abbreviated Hg after Mercury) after using SVN for years and finding Git’s mish-mash of sub-programs horrendous to use (the quality varies so much, whereas Hg is pure Python code throughout). Also, how come you didn’t mention Mozilla use Hg for Firefox etc? I just wish their were more GUI clients for Hg on Mac.

best tool is textmate’s integrated svn :)

I always used Tortoise CVS it works great!
Have to check the other ones out ass well soon.

nice post again….

One major downside to CVS is that it doesn’t support binary diffs. So if you use it for more than code you end up with a lot of duplication. The other tools are more efficient so if for example you have a website project you can include images, mock-ups and such in the repository as well.

I recently switched to Git although it took a little while to pick things up it was worthwhile. I stringly suggest getting the Link [peepcode.com] on Git. It was the best $9 I’ve spent and well worth the hour to run through it.

I’d like to note that the Fedora Project doesn’t use git in quite the way you represent. Packaging, the major use of version control for Fedora is currently done in cvs with many people exploring how we can move to one or more other version control systems.

The link you have is actually to the fedorahosted.org service that we run. The canonical URL is Link [git.fedorahosted.org] We have hosting services for various upstream projects. We support git, hg (http://hg.fedorahosted.org/hg), bzr (http://bzr.fedorahosted.org/bzr), and subversion in fedorahosted.

I use CVS and SVN quite a lot, never knew about the others

I’m using the subversion way, with svn on Ubuntu as client. Nice listing by the way

Excellent list. Also very helpful.

I think that Git is becaming more and more popular because of the Rails Community, but Mercurial and Baazar are also good choices.
Very Nice Listing. Thanks!

I just switched to using SVN for my web development projects and I will never go back. For OS X using Versions Link [www.versionsapp.com] has been a pleasant way to implement SVN into my workflow. Combine Versions with Changes Link [changesapp.com] for diff comparison and I’m pretty sure you’ll never go back to “file.htm.old” again.

My favorite goes to Subversion (hosted @ Beanstalk) with Tortoise as client.
The ultimate combo !

Great article! I’ll definitely give a chance to Bazaar.

jQuery tips, version control… looks like some developpers are sneaking inside SM :)

VersionsLink [www.versionsapp.com] for Mac OSX is great! It’s still in Beta, but far superior and more user-friendly than all of the other SVN clients I’ve tried for either Mac or PC.

I use TortiseSVN on Windows and svnX for Mac. For Hosted SVN we use Link [springloops.com] which is similar to Beanstalk but has a friendly UI and Deployment actually makes sense.

We use SVN from long time and is very great as a versioning tool. As a client we use mixed, TortoiseSVN (admin, advanced users) and SVN for Dreamweaver (visual developers, HTML coders).
This 2 combination is the best we find out.

Excellent info.
I have used CVS before and not dared to use any other yet.
Will try to use others sometime.

Pathange Vinay

Excellent info.
I’m just about to introduce version control for my company projects. The list came at just the right time, before I pick something that boxes us into a corner.

Mark Jones

Take a look at DropBox project (Link [www.getdropbox.com]).
It’s main purpouse is to provide folders which can be synchronized among few computers. It’s not a typical CVS software, but You can use it for a small project groups. It’s easy to use, has a web interface nad runs under linux/windows (not sure about Mac). I strongly recommend it.

(this is not an add :-) )

I have used all the above (except LibreSource) + GNU Arch, SVK (with SVN backend). The best according to me (right balance) is Hg/Mercurial. For a real pro wanting full control and needs raw speed (little faster than hg) is Git. Git is cool but beware that you can easily mess around by trying commands that a novice should not be playing with!

brilliant - I used to use 4projects, VCS is much better for virtual teams than email :)

I find Git is much easier to learn than subversion. Type “git init” and your repository is ready. Compare this to subversion: “svnadmin create --fs-type fsfs .” Not to mention branching, tagging, renaming or removing files.
There are much more commands in Git than in Subversion, but you need only a few for daily work.

Never used this kind of applications before, but will certainly give it a go.
Do any of these tools work for images as well code, as this will be ideal.

Ever since I switched from SVN to Git, I have been glad I made the switch. Being able to have the flexibility that Git brings to the table is just an amazing facet to development.

I use svn via VisualSVN - there server was free and took about 10 minutes to setup and their client (although you’re not forced to use it) integrates itself into Visual Studio seamlessly.

Link [spf13.com] Using SVK is a great way to provide distributed version control with a Subversion server. Best thing about using SVK is that it is heterogeneous meaning some clients can use SVN and some can use SVK without experiencing issues.

I appreciate the article. But I’d like to extend the question. I’m a lone and very basic developer with no current experience with version control systems. A friend recommended SVN but I’ve barely gotten my hands around Eclipse and Mysql. which are the current backbone of my development environment. I am using the Brit, Eclipse based, report writer against MySql databases.(I’m on windows, XP and vista with Freeware only) I’ve looked at the Svn documentation, but am very wary of adding that complexity into the environment I barely understand. I’d like to continue to set up an environment that can grow, (languages and tools) as I do. I only have so much bandwidth for learning!

What advice does this much smarter crowd have to offer???

Does anybody have any information on job/part number applications for design? Working at a larger company we would like to have a piece of software that allows to look up part numbers etc that we can place at the bottom of our printed documents.

Version control would also be nice. Just wondering if anybody had any experience with this.

Thanks

Mercurial section should include link to Link [www.bitbucket.org] - a equivalent of GitHub

Just finished setting up SubVersion/Apache server with TortoiseSVN clients for a pile of legacy code with myriad branches. I like it so far, finally get lazy boss to almost document his changes (using “log required” policy). At least now I know where and what they are and the order they occurred.

My only prior experience was SourceSafe and PVCS, so I cannot compare to the distributed products. I will say that I would have a concern over the integrity of multiple repositories.

I liked the article and found it very informative.

The article is right on time but I’m wondering about this:
How do you use svn in a graphic studio for files like .cdr, .jpg, .indd etc?

Tom Brander: You should definitely give version control a try. It’s nice even for a single developer. And you can start off very simply: at a minimum, you only need to know how to set up a repository and check in your code and changes. Then you can go on your way, knowing that all your changes exist in the repository if you ever need them. You can put off learning even simple things like how to look through the history and fetch old versions until you actually need them (or are bored and have some spare bandwidth for learning).

I won’t try and tell you which you should use…it probably doesn’t matter too much. Getting started with any one should be pretty simple, and the basic concepts will transfer reasonably well if you decide to switch later. If you have a friend who uses SVN, that may well be the best choice for you. I think the biggest hurdle getting started is figuring out the terminology — sometimes you know what effect you want to achieve, but not what it’s called in the documentation. So having someone to ask questions of can be helpful.

Good luck!

–Josh

Hey Thanks for this, this would definitely help a lot.

Cheers :)
M

nice huge list.thanks for this one.its very useful

Very thorough set of reviews - SVN’s been a bit of a fearful topic for me (a designer) after having some horrible experiences with Tortoise SVN a few years back that had to do with a problem between swapping files across OS’s… I’ve always held out hope that a new wave of SVN tools would make some of the tricker parts of SVN easier to use, and from this list I think I’ll end up trying out at least a few. Thanks for the great information. Link [www.makedesignnotwar.com]

Well done!!! Keep on smashing us!!

Joshua, Thanks for the advice, That’s along the lines of what I’ve been thinking, I guess I’ll just have to leap, like with most things! I’ll probably try SVN, with one of the Eclipse plug ins, and go from there.
Tom

Tourtoise svn and the svn plugin for eclipse are really the best in my oppinion

You have one important thing forgotten: for most shared projects, there have to be an extra server, mostly Apache. For CVS and SVN, there have to be a customized configuration, for e.g. the mod_dav has to be activated for CVS and SVN, but not for Bazaar. To know, if a custom configuration is required or if the SCM system fits to the default configuration, is important for many people. They’ll learn which SCM systems could be used cost-effective and fast to set up.

1. I usually work in projects involving very large files (lossless compression video files) and it would be nice if everyone on the team had local access to the files, because it’s way to slow to work across the network. Would any of this systems be right for me?

2. what about disk space? As far as I understand all of this system allow the users to go back to earlier versions, that will probably take a lot of disk space since they are big bynary files and a lot of things change. Is it possible not keep the history?

sccs was the first verison control system I’m aware of, UNIX System III from AT&T/Bell Labs circa 1981.

You guys really gave Monotone short shrift here- it’s quite a nice setup with some very smart people working on it.

An excellent comparison worthy of Smashing Magazine. I’m glad to see that Smashing has been writing more lately on back-end development (i.e., scripting, version control, etc.) as well as the design-focused posts that we’ve all come to know and love you for. I think, for me at least, you’ve hit just the right mix!

SpringLoops are pretty good!

Thanks and really a great knowledge base ! As far as now I have used CVS as well as SVN. I am using it on a Mac platform and its really very helpful for the easy version control of the various doc’s I work regularly as a part of quality Control. I am using iSVN on a Mac platform. Great post fr the beginners!

With topics like these and some unanswered questions I really wish there’s a forum on this site to discuss and share the knowledge beyond comments… but that’s just a thought :)

Bazaar’s the shit. It’s so easy to setup and to use, I’m inclined to say it’s the almost perfect version control system for any not-so-tech-savvy designer, if ever needed. Even using it on the command line is pretty simple.

I always feared vc but wanted to get into it, as it really can save you from headaches. I started reading a book about Subversion three times but always gave up. Not that I could not understand it, I’m more of a developer than a designer, but it bored me to death. Now Bazaar is really simple to get started with and has a pretty easy to understand user guide that will walk you through the very basic steps needed to maintain projects. Sometimes you won’t need anything more. And if you do need more later on, be sure, Bazaar has it; despite its simplicity.

P.S.: I’m not on Canonical Ltd.’s payroll. :P

There’s also Fossil - Link [www.fossil-scm.org]
It’s interesting because it uses SQLite for it’s repository storage. This makes the repositories easy to move around.

We are working on a SVN client integrated in Photoshop.

This will be a plugin which will let you perform all version control operations directly from Photoshop, and it will make the whole process much nicer and easier too.

The plugin will be implemented for both Mac and Windows, and it will also have a hosted web space for files.

At the moment we are looking for beta testers for the project. If you are a designer who uses version control (or would like to start using version control) please send us an e-mail to Link [], and we will contact you as soon as the beta version is ready for testing.

You forgot to mention CVSNT that implements lots of feature plain old CVS lacks (i.e. binary deltas).