Filed under: Software, Developer
Cornerstone passes Versions on the way to yesterday's finish line
Cornerstone made a dashing premier as a full release recently, outpacing the much-anticipated Versions in its development cycle and leaving many of us wondering: why couldn't we have had such polished Subversion clients back when Subversion really mattered? With friendlier and more flexible version control systems like Mercurial and (my recent favorite) Git taking center stage, it just seems odd that two applications devoted to last year's RCS are vying for the spotlight.
After a 10 minute tryout, I have to say that Versions, though still in beta, was more intuitive in general. I really, really like the timeline feature in Cornerstone, though, which allows you to Command-click any two points on the timeline and see a diff with the built-in viewer. For basic Subversion-related tasks (and probably more advanced tasks that I didn't delve into yet), both clients are far ahead of what currently exists, both in usability and aesthetics.
For those who still have a strong interest in Subversion, and who haven't already sworn allegiance to Versions at some point in the year (plus) we've been waiting for it, Cornerstone just crowded the playing field. You can read more on Cornerstone at the Zennaware website.
Addendum: As noted in the comments, my impression that Subversion is being relegated to obscurity (and the bias which that impression created in this article) is entirely without basis. I concede and would like to say that, given the stats, it's great to see some clients with real polish coming out.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Dennis said 8:07PM on 7-02-2008
I can't believe that $59 is the "special introductory price"?? That is way too much for a RCS client. I like ZigVersion http://zigversion.com/ and picked it for nothing (that is $0). The interface, sure is pretty though...
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Odineye said 7:42PM on 7-02-2008
I was not familiar with this concept at all (maybe I've been under a rock), and found the documentation on most of the linked sites to be riddled with incomprehensible geek-speak.
For those in my boat I found the Versions website the most helpful, and it linked to the following book on SVN, the first chapter of which explained it much more clearly (for me, at least).
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.4/svn-book.pdf
After looking at that I can see the potential on these products.
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justin said 8:43PM on 7-02-2008
Despite the cool factors of git and mercurial, there are still plenty of people for whom svn is good enough.
But, I wholeheartedly agree... $59 is waaaaaay too much to pay for a svn client, esp when most text editors have built-in functionality. $19, maybe.
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Anonymous said 12:15AM on 7-03-2008
$1 is too much to pay for an RCS client.
The only thing I've been negatively surprised about since I switched is the comparative lack of freeware for OS X and how Mac users seem more willing to pay for things that should be free.
Ryan said 8:46PM on 7-02-2008
" last year's RCS"?
Your VCS is not exactly a flavor of the month (or year) decision, heck there are still people using cvs.
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Brett Terpstra said 9:01PM on 7-02-2008
I abandoned CVS as soon as I saw the benefits of SVN. I swung toward Git a little more reluctantly but have come to appreciate it quite a bit. I know that there are those who don't have the flexibility in the RCS decision that I do, and those who don't care to change something that's working for them now. I appreciate that.
With no intention of starting any flame-wars, I humbly submit that the new breed of control systems indicate that Subversion is likely headed the way of CVS, eventually. Although, as you rightly state, people do and probably will continue to use CVS long into the future. I just don't think we're going to see any stunning new GUIs for it.
Ryan said 9:43PM on 7-02-2008
Ah okay, said like that I can agree with you. Eventually SVN will be pushed aside as CVS has, although I do feel thats a long way off (since SVN is currently replacing CVS now).
The original wording sounded a little strange to me, that's why I commented.
Oh, and I think bzr is pretty cool - having it be python and everything I code python makes extending it and incorporating into my projects pretty easy :-)
Dan said 9:31AM on 7-03-2008
Like me, my office is still using CVS despite near daily issues with it. I'd be happy if they upgraded to *anything* else, including SVN.
Mr.Clicky said 9:33PM on 7-02-2008
Well I've just read the post and all the comments and I still have no idea what these apps do or what you're talking about
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Ryan said 9:46PM on 7-02-2008
Don't feel bad.
When people talk about video/audio/photo/artsy production stuff I have very little grasp what *they* do. ;-)
But if you would like to know, check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revision_control
Jeff said 9:33PM on 7-02-2008
I wouldn't call Subversion last year's RCS. Its just started to gain traction in corporate America the last year or so. Sure, it will eventually be pushed aside by GIT probably. But it took Subversion about 3 or 4 years to get people to move off of CVS.
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maybesew said 10:06AM on 7-03-2008
I really have to disagree with this articles bias against SVN. And even having read Brett's comments here, the reality is that for vast target audience for source control moves VERY slow and methodically. As people have said, some are still on RCS/CVS let alone moving to subversion.
Individual authors might be able to pick up and move to a new solution, but software companies, and even open source projects with a small amount of people, but spread out across the globe would not change their source control unless there are significant, and i really stress significant reasons for it.
That said, I don't know that GIT will ever be a mass market source control system. Having read up on it, and watched the video google talks about it, and who is was developed for and the benefits of it, I think that many projects and companies will not switch from subversion to GIT. For projects like the linux kernel, it makes sense. For companies with hundreds of various repositories and projects, I don't know that it makes sense. And that goes for now, and probably 5 and also ten years from now.
My comments are not regarding cornerstone or versions, just the underlying source control technologies.
Brett Terpstra said 12:28PM on 7-03-2008
@maybesew
I fit into the category of people who can switch systems with very little effort/concern. In the realm in which I operate, I'm seeing Git gaining popularity. I don't, however, have experience on the large-scale, corporate side of version control.
I'm unsure whether either of these apps are designed to meet the needs of such environments. My impression of the applications (especially Versions) is that they are designed to help introduce Subversion and ease its use. It's that audience for whom I see Subversion aging. My impression could be entirely wrong. As stated in the article, I only gave it a surface level run-through and my conclusions are based on my own realm of experience.
The last paragraph of the article -- the one that says "For those who still have a strong interest in Subversion" -- is not intended to be read with any sarcasm or snarkiness. It's stated with the understanding that there are many, by choice or necessity, who truly do have a strong interest in Subversion. Having learned (as I often do) quite a bit in the comments, I would also retract the bias in the initial bias of the article.
floggy said 10:22PM on 7-02-2008
Cornerstone looks promising, but is buggy as hell (crashes constantly) and is bizarrely, extraordinarily slow in updating repositories (the same update takes seconds in SmartSVN or Versions). Pass.
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Think Adrian said 1:30AM on 7-03-2008
Just to continue the debate, Subversion is and will matter for at least two more years in the bigger corporations at least.
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Ryan Flynn said 3:26AM on 7-03-2008
Can I pick the brain of all TUAW readers for a second?
I love the look and idea of both Versions and Cornerstone but here's the rub - I want the same kind of thing but for documents, not code. Basically I want something like Sharepoint but running locally on my Mac, with a front end like Versions or Cornerstone.
I tried Cornerstone for this purpose (added a load of Pages documents I was working on) and the issue is that it views the Pages document as a folder, rather than a single file. This means that when I make a change to the file Cornerstone does not understand how the file has been changed and refuses to check it back in.
Any ideas for a potential solution? Thanks!
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oZ said 3:49AM on 7-03-2008
The fundamental design of Git makes it certain that it will not displace anything in the corporate world. They will continue to use Subversion or Perforce until something better comes along that /isn't/ distributed and /isn't/ just rabid fanboys foaming at the mouth about it. See also "Ruby".
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Jash Sayani said 5:45AM on 7-03-2008
Is it a freeware ?
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Ian Beck said 10:28AM on 7-03-2008
Although appealing at the outset, Cornerstone's lack of an easy way to accomplish some of the simplest tasks and its non-standard use of Apple UI elements makes it a no-go for me. See http://beckism.com/2008/06/cornerstone/ if you're interested in specifics.
As far as the price, I'm confused why people think this should be free. Consider: versioning is incredibly important for anyone writing code. However, not everyone writing code is comfortable with or wants to learn the command-line interface which is virtually the only way to access svn on a Mac. Cornerstone and Versions both provide a much easier way to access versioning, have an extremely slight learning curve as long as you understand the basics of version tracking, and allow individuals to get a simple versioning system set up with a minimum of fuss and effort. That's huge. Damned right I'll pay for that.
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AronT said 4:29PM on 7-03-2008
If you are a Java programmer and use Eclipse on a mac, then you don't have a huge need for a gui client. When you do there is always svnX:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/svnx.html
And considering that subversion now comes standard with Leopard I don't see it going away anytime soon.