[p4] How does Bitkeeper compare to Perforce?

[Fabien Niñoles]

What BitKeeper call atomic changeset is far more specific: it's a changeset
that are made exactly from where you start to work, without having to
synchronize before submitting.  This way, you never "lost" your change in a
merge. If you find this an important feature, BitKeeper give it to you for
free. In Perforce, to enforce this kind of atomicity, every user must work
in their own branch and merging is done afterward, in the server.  So, yes,
it's not impossible, but it has to be done through a process (just like you
can have Perforce's atomic changelist in CVS by tagging every checkin and
ensuring a way to roll back if something goes wrong.).

My experience with BitKeeper is minor, but what I find is that you cannot
work with BitKeeper the same way you do with Perforce.  BitKeeper need far
more space on the client machines, since the full repository history is
download.  Cherry picking of directories (aka views in Perforce) wasn't
available as far as I know, which mean a little less flexibility in
repository layout.  Finally, Perforce model of "client state is in a
database" make it unbeatable in term of speed.  My company has became so
dependant of it (by letting the workspace size blow out) that switching to
another SCM will basically ask for a complete redesign of our build system.
I think that the must important point to be carefully evaluated by any
company wanting to migrate from Perforce to another revision system.
Perforce is usually an order of magnitude or two faster than any other SCM
around.

Hope this help,

Fabien Niñoles

2007/7/3, Bennett, Patrick <Patrick.Bennett at inin.com>:
>
> It's hard to take the comparison very seriously when the first item in
> the list states that Perforce doesn't support atomic changesets
> (changelists).  :\
>
> Patrick Bennett
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com
> [mailto:perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com] On Behalf Of
> Jeremy.Chatelaine
> Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2007 8:52 AM
> To: perforce-user at perforce.com
> Subject: [p4] How does Bitkeeper compare to Perforce?
>
> Hi all,
>
> I'm a happy Perforce user but recently the company I work for ran some
> source control evaluation.
>
> One person pointed me to this page:
> http://www.bitkeeper.com/Comparisons.Perforce.html
>
> [...]
>
>
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