My company ha been using Accurev since early 2010, coming from StarTeam before that and CVS in the very distant past. I haven't used CVS (having been on a different team at the time) so I have no comparisons there, and I never bothered to learn StarTeam too intimately.
Since then I've also played with both the CLI and Tortoise versions of SVN, Git, and Mercurial (Hg) in my free time. I plan on giving Git a more thorough go at some point, but I found Hg to be much more intuitive and easy (at least under Windows). Anyway, like I said management saddled us with Accurev and after spending time to get fairly well acquainted with it (GUI and CLI both) as a developer... I absolutely hate it.
Someone earlier in the thread summed it up as software written by devs that had read about SCM in a book but never used it... I agree whole-heartedly but you also get the feeling that they had the same level of experience with GUIs, efficient processing, etc. (In fact, I see that Accurev has a new product called "Kando" based on Git...sounds like they've finally realized how bad their model is. But to quote a coworker "I wouldn't trust anything written by the same team at this point"... I have to wonder if it is a coincidence that there is a baby-wipe product named "Kandoo"...)
Ok, obviously I don't care for the product. If you've spent the time to read this thread, then obviously there are quite a few folks with similar views on it. But I wanted to share some of my own gripes that I've had with it over the last few years as well -- btw if it helps anyone, I think we were using v4.7 previously and have been on v5.3 (?) now for quite some time.
My biggest beef with Accurev is how horribly slow and inefficient it is. Notice I didn't use the word GUI -- I've tried both GUI and CLI-- the slow parts are on the server, so you're screwed either way. It seems like I see one of those damn modal dialog/status bars at every turn... I switch tabs -- bam!: processing, please wait. I reparent a stream -- oh wait just another minute. For "Updates" I expect it to be a little slow (although sometimes it gets annoying when it screams "Overlap" [aka a conflict] at me when I happen to have a file with IDENTICAL content to what it's pushing down). I change directories browsing to a path... processing, processing, "oh you want to go down one more sub-folder"... let me process that some more. You get the idea.
Is that my only beef? Hell no.
1) For the merge tool, I've had the "ignore white space" option checked for years, but I can only ever recall it working ONE time (for example, say we're talking about about comparing say 2 versions of a JSP where I converted spaces to tabs or trimmed some trailing white space or something). Why is this an issue? Because it becomes pure torture for every other developer that looks in the history and wants to see what REALLY changed. If they can't get implement this correctly, don't put the F***ING option there. (Note:using WinMerge as an external compare tool, with appropriate settings works fine)
2) I've had instances where checking a file into one stream and then needing to put an IDENTICAL copy of that same file into another stream (using the same issues #) causes it to throw a temper tantrum. If I use the wrong issue #, it goes in with no problem. This is probably an isolated case (and maybe due to other poor process decisions my company saddles us with) but I thought I'd mention it for completeness.
3) The history? All stored on the server. Translation: If you enjoyed waiting for it to switch tabs, create/reparent a workspace, and update then you're in for more of the same when you want to view history.
4) The way it's exclusionary rules are done is not only terrible but also pathetic. Under Windows, you actually have to create an environment variable where you can create some exclusions to files that you don't want to show up. IT DOES NOT SUPPORT REGEX. I've seen several other SCMs that offer much better approaches (I'm fond of the the ignore files used in Hg. I think there is something similar in Git too) -- not only are both regex and glob patterns supported, but defining this in a FILE is more system-friendly and much easier to edit that putting it into an Environment variable. Not only that, but it seems that the ignore filters are iffy at best. The way our projects are defined have the build folder under the project folder (which is source controlled) and trying to exclude all folders under the the build folder doesnt seem to work -- most of them still show up in my "External" filter even after setting up rules.
5) It's check-in process (a "Promote") also seems to run with the theme of slow and inefficient. We use an external ticket system (not AccuWork... our ticketing system has its flaws but after using AccuRev, I can't image that product to be much better). Anyway, when we say "Promote [this file]", first it pops up with another modal dialog (after the required waiting, while it does more stat processing), then it presents a list of ALL tickets it has pulled (there are a lot...too many to reliably find anything). Next, we must enter our ticket number from the other system, and wait some more while it takes forever to find a match (I thought it already pulled the list...geez). Finally, it will display the matches, then we pick one and tell it to promote using that ticket number. After yet some more waiting, we're finally done.
I could go on but I'll stop there.... this post is getting too long. Instead, let me sum up Accurev in my own way: After having to wait for all these slow annoying "Stat processing", etc dialogs during an issue where we were trying to quickly get a fix out, I came up with a new slogan for them: "AccuRev: when seconds count, your fix is only minutes away".
Since management won't get rid of Accurev (I know they won't go for anything without Enterprise support but I've begged for them to consider anything else: SmartGit...Kiln...Perforce...), I have been using TortoiseHg to locally version control my files (in addition to Accurev). It is a little more work. But for those saddled with Accurev, it makes life so much easier. You get: better diff management -- MUCH MUCH easier to see and review code changes after an "accurev update", the ability to view some history without waiting 10 years for the server, ability to share directly between you and another dev (assuming they also install it), ability to revert/restore your changes if you accidentally wipe something out while trying to get clear of Accurev's merge hell ("Overlapped" files), and even more if you can get the rest of your team using it.
EDIT: Forgot to mention, during a conversion with our build engineers I was told that while Accurev has a Java API that you can develop for, it apparently requires purchasing some sort of additional licensing. I can't confirm this since a) I can't find pricing anywhere on Accurev's website* and b) I doubt like hell they'd tell me at work...
*Kinda weird considering I can find some sort of rough pricing for Perforce, Kiln, StarTeam and SmartGit quite easily. I usually get a sketchy feeling when some product won't list any sort of price up front, guess it shouldn't surprise me too much that Accurev falls into that category...
