Summersault Weblog

There’s been quite a lof interest in source control management (SCM) software since Linus Torvalds recently announced that he will no longer be using BitKeeper to manage the Linux kernel project. Related to this, kerneltrap.org has a timely survey about favorite SCM software. Sure it’s unscientific, but being skewed towards people who have some interest in large projects like the like the Linux kernel does make it more interesting. These are generally readers of kerneltrap.org, after all.

The two in the lead are no surprises: CVS and Subversion. CVS is the old heavyweight with a large mindshare. Subversion has gained popularity as a “better CVS”. Beyond these, the options get interesting because they get distributed.

The remaining options are not all as distinct as they appear. Bazaar is a fork of Arch, and Bazaar-NG “has ideas from arch but the influence is less strong”. SVK is distributed, but uses SVN as it’s back-end.

Of all of these, darcs has the clear lead, with about double the votes of the closest competitor. Darcs is what I use myself, after switching from CVS.

There is a scramble now for an open source SCM to emerge as the preferred tool for the Linux kernel project. Linus is using his own ‘git’ for now, but it’s not a complete SCM solution. Git is attractive because is a very fast when working with the large kernel project, a point at which SCMs like darcs and Arch have been know to stumble or fail.

Both darcs and Arch are making progress at improving performance for large projects, and looking specifically at integrating with ‘git’. Being chosen for the kernel project could be tipping point of much broader adoption and popularity.

While these survey results may not ultimately matter, supporting your favorite SCM during these moments might.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 26th, 2005 at 9:54 am and is filed under Software Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.