Can we finally move to DVCS in Corporate Software? Is SVN still a 'must have' for development? [closed]

Answer 1

Is it considered better for a single developer?

If anything, Subversion is worse for a single developer (more troublesome to setup).

But a good reason to keep using SVN is inertia. If SVN works fine for your project (or in your company), there is no need to go through the pains of switching over. There might be some training costs involved in teaching everyone the new tools (and new workflows), with no real benefits.

Answer 2

I don't know of any intrinsic reasons to prefer centralized vcs, there are plenty of extrinsic factors like legacy systems, managerial inertia, learning curve, etc.

DVCS is pretty much demonstrating itself to be the "better mousetrap".

Answer 3

We use subversion as storage for data, which is non trivial to merge (we do hardware development, and the design files are a undocumented binary format). SVN has the advantage that you can set locks on files, so only one developer can work on a file, and is also forced to check out the newest file before editing.

Answer 4

Subversion is ideal when the centralized paradigm is ideal.

One such situation is when working on papers. It makes much more sense just to keep one master copy that everyone pulls from. We don't want to create branches or tags. We just want to keep track of who makes a change and then propagate to all authors.

Answer 5

I can see reasons where you might continue to use SVN if you had been using it for a long time. Especially in a small company or coding circle, the transition from SVN to either git or Mercurial, when you might not be using any of the more powerful features of them, might make you adverse to making the switch. As pointed out by Thilo, a large company using SVN is going to find that change monumental.

Also, I think SVN still has is places, particularly when it comes to teaching revision control. But that's taking from my own personal experience of learning SVN in university versus teaching myself git, so my opinions won't be objective on that.

That being said, if you were starting a repository from scratch, I can't think of any conditions where you might decide SVN is absolutely necessary. Perhaps when dealing with legacy systems.

or legacy users ;)

Answer 6

My answer is based on a few assumptions:

• The subject matter you're storing in source control is source code, and what you're doing with the code is professional software development.
• You should always use the best tool for the job; As the Joel Test says, you should use the best tools that money can buy - even if they're free.
• External factors are irrelevant to choosing what is the best tool for the job - these are the roadblocks you must overcome to adoption. Those reasons in the meantime are excuses to continue to use Subversion, not reasons why you should explicitly use it.

Secondly, that a DVCS is considered a better, more powerful tool than Subversion. It has been discussed a lot on Stack Overflow in the past, and other answers have chimed in that most people agree that DVCS is "the better mousetrap." I don't feel it's necessary to prove this point; you can peruse the linked/similar questions already posted here. Of course, not every single DVCS will be better than Subversion in every aspect, but I believe that leading DVCS's like Mercurial, git, etc are better than Subversion is nearly every aspect.

So by my logic, if you are going to choose the best tool for the job, and Subversion is an inferior tool, Subversion should no longer be used. That doesn't mean we'll see instant, worldwide adoption, but it is my contention that--if you believe in using the best tool for the job--all organizations should plan to move to a DVCS. Of course, many will not, and I expect people will continue to use Subversion for a long time.