[p4] Git/ BitKeeper comparisons

[Robert Cowham]

If you have an integrate bug that is reproducible, what does support say? I
have usually found purported errors have been down to the user rather than
Perforce!

Regarding Git/Bitkeeper, they are great for the distributed model, but that
model doesn't suit everyone.

A key issue for most commercial companies is control over their SCM
repository. With distributed repositories you have very little central
control and oversight. This affects things like backups, but also the lack
of control over your intellectual property - this reason alone is usually
enough to avoid such an approach.

For Open Source solutions in both spaces, see David Wheeler's excellent
review. http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/scm.html

<<<<<<<<<
The advantages of the decentralized approach include better performance
which can be useful with an offshore site with potentially unreliable comms
links. However, if both sites are working on the same files in real time, it
is often simpler to have them working in the same repository since conflicts
will be more readily visible and resolvable by the people involved. David
Wheeler quotes Bastiaan Veelo:

    [In decentralized development, merging] of your code with the main
branch has to be done by the one project maintainer, [whereas] centralized
in the sense that there is just one repository, is actually more
decentralized in a social sense since there are as many code integrators as
there are developers with write access to the repository. 
>>>>>>>>

Developers get bees in their bonnet on a regular basis. Passion is good but
can be a pain when misdirected. He/she needs to think up a level to see the
whole picture.

Regarding Perforce and distributed development I think it is currently a
pretty good solution (proxies work fairly well in many though not all
situations), but would like to see more work to support remote read-only
servers in particular. Also some level of replication between servers would
be nice.

Regards
Robert

> -----Original Message-----
> From: perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com 
> [mailto:perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com] On Behalf Of 
> David Ferguson
> Sent: 27 October 2006 08:44
> To: perforce-user at perforce.com
> Subject: [p4] Git/ BitKeeper comparisons
> 
> Okay ...Anybody want to summarize experiences of 
> usefulness/effectiveness of Git or BitKeeper for large scale 
> installations -- We've been wrestling with a particular 
> feature/bug of Perforce for awhile now ...
> Basically
> BranchA has changes 1-50
> BranchB integrates 1-40 (of A) into B
> BranchB integrates change 45 explicitly into B BranchB then 
> integrates 41-50 of A into B
>  
> Net result is that change 45 seems to be reapplied into B.
>  
> As a result of the above result, I've got a developer who is 
> absolutely convinced that we should shift to Git, or at least 
> BitKeeper since they're so much better at distributed source models.
>  
> I'll be handling a rebuttal concerning how good/ bad Perforce 
> really is at distributed source models (and the obvious 
> corollary of how our code is NOT
> distributable) but didn't really feel like spending a week 
> playing with Git and BitKeeper to learn their weaknesses.  So 
> I figure I'll ask around for Cliff's Notes.  Anybody got any?
>  
> -daf
> David Ferguson
> Manager of SCM team -- VMware