[p4] PVCS Anyone?

[Chuck Karish]

Merant bought PVCS some time in the late 1990s.  They bought the
client-server product they sold as PVCS Dimensions soon afterwards.
Serena Software bought both products in about 2002 and apparently
still sells both of them.

So, it makes a big difference whether you're talking about PVCS
Professional or PVCS Dimensions.

Unless you're talking to Serena sales people.  I tried to evaluate their
ChangeMan product (before they acquired PVCS) and the sales team
was unable to put me in contact with anyone who could answer technical
questions about their product.

  Chuck

On 3/21/07, Bennett, Patrick <Patrick.Bennett at inin.com> wrote:
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com
> > [mailto:perforce-user-bounces at perforce.com] On Behalf Of
> > David Weintraub
> > Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 5:59 PM
> > To: Perforce list
> > Subject: [p4] PVCS Anyone?
> >
> > Does anyone know anything about PVCS?
> >
> > Serena software is talking to my company and wants to push PVCS Pro
> > because it handles builds and deployments.
>
> [pb] Run far far far away.  PVCS is (or was at least) complete crap.
> We used it heavily for a fair number of years and have been using
> Perforce for about the past 5 years now.
> PVCS was abysmally slow (something that would take Perforce about 2
> minutes would take PVCS about 6 hours [and I mean that literally]) and
> was absolutely unusable remotely.
> The last time I checked their web site to see what had become of it, it
> seemed pretty clear (to me at least) that the product had been on
> life-support for years and that they were just milking their existing
> customer base.
>
> > The last time I used it, it was buggy, slow, used file locking,
> > non-atomic changes, and had rotten integration in Eclipse. The only
> > "good" feature is it had a rather primitive defect tracking system
> > built in. But, that was almost a decade ago.
>
> [pb] Define 'built-in' - if you want to call the junk that was PVCS
> Tracker 'built-in.'
> Just get something like Jira for bug tracking (or even Bugzilla - it's
> better than tracker was).
> It's cheap and is far superior to tracker (and you get the source).
>
> > I've scoured the Web for any information about PVCS and found none.
>
> [pb] Which should tell you something.  PVCS used to be a pretty major
> player, but they improved it *very* slowly and it was always only
> slightly better than the original (and ancient) RCS on which it was
> based.
> The big claim to fame PVCS had at the time was their 'promotion' model.
> It was basically just a way of automatically labeling files via a
> promote / demote process.
> Perforce branches are far superior.
>
> > I know of no one who uses it. And there is nothing about its features
> > anywhere on the Internet. Heck, even the Wikipedia's Revision Control
> > Software Comparison page leaves off PVCS
> > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_revision_control_s
> > oftware>.
> >
> > Anyone who has used it in the last couple of years and can give me a
> > quick feature rundown?
>
> [pb] I haven't used it in the last couple of years, so all this may be
> moot, but PVCS left a *very* sour taste at our company.
>
> >
> > * Does it support Atomic Transactions?
>
> [pb] When I last used it had nothing remotely resembling changelists.
> The revision control files had to be directly accessible by all users.
> All version and branch information for a single file was stored in a
> matching file on a server share.  Operations on the file (get -l, etc.)
> would put a lock file on the network, copy the entire file down to the
> local machine, manipulate the file (or in the case of a 'get' pull out
> the specified version (even though it had just copied the entire archive
> down to the local machine), copy the file back to the share when it was
> done and remove the lock file.
>
> They came out with a client/server version later but all indications
> were that it was junk.
>
> > * Is the Eclipse plugin a real plugin, or it only works with Windows?
>
> [pb] No idea.
>
> > * How is it speed wise compared to CVS or Subversion?
>
> [pb] It was very, very, very slow.
>
> > * How expensive is it?
>
> [pb] It shouldn't be hard for you to find that out, but it is definitely
> more expensive than Perforce.
>
> > * What does it mean it does "deployment"?
> > * How is its build management features?
>
> [pb] Can't say.  I wouldn't even waste your time with them honestly.
>
> >
> > Any information would be welcome.
>
> [pb] Good luck... Let us know what their demo is like if you bring them
> in.  :)
>
> Cheers...
> Patrick Bennett
>
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>


-- 
Chuck Karish   karish at well.com   (415) 317-0182