Hi,
Please let me know the differences between the Subversion and MKS
+9
A:
Subversion: centralized VCS, merge or lock semantics, repository-based, open source, massive market share (though it's been losing some ground to the DVCS entries like Mercurial and Git), free, excellent toolset and supporting infrastructure.
MKS: centralized VCS, lock semantics only, repository-based, closed source, relatively limited market share, not free ($999+/license), significantly less well-developed toolset.
John Feminella
2009-06-16 11:29:41
Updating this answer, since I've had the (mis?)fortune to do some work on a few projects for clients that are using MKS. In addition to everything above, MKS does provide a command-line interface similar to Subversion's, although much more limited in power and efficiency. Also, to be fair, MKS as a suite is more than a just version-control tool -- it also provides issue tracking and other related services. This answer is only in the context of MKS Integrity, the main source-control product.
John Feminella
2010-02-08 16:43:17
Another pain point is that it's very difficult to find other tools that integrate well with MKS. The only real contender on the market for a CI tool that will integrate with MKS is Anthill Pro, and they're not free either. There are rumors that Hudson is going to have some MKS integration soon.
John Feminella
2010-02-08 16:44:23
A:
MKS Integrity is an Application Lifecycle Management tool that can manage all development artifacts and activities, including source code. MKS Integrity includes software change and configuration management capabilities, with emphasis on configuration management, rather than just basic version control. As such, it treats configurations as first class objects, with strong support for version, branching and sharing (re-use) of configurations, not just files. It also provides sophisticated change management capabilities, including task oriented change propagation between configuration branches.
Gartner's last two Software Change and Configuration Management (SCCM) Magic Quadrant reviews placed MKS Integrity in the Leader's quadrant, identifying MKS as most visionary. The 2007 Forrester SCCM Wave study also recognized MKS Integrity as a strong and mature toolset. As for lock semantics, MKS Integrity supports both non-exclusive locking (which provides notification of intent to change with the commit behavior of optimistic locking systems) and exclusive locking.
Subversion is a version control system that has aspects of configuration management as well, and some support for change management (though not for task-oriented or workflow driven change management). As the previous poster stated, it is open source and widely used. As open source software, Subversion has no license fees; you would be naive to equate that with "free"; providing support is still a cost, whether it is provided internally or by a third party organization, and integration costs into other tools can be significant.
Colin Doyle
2009-11-25 15:41:20
A:
Holger
2010-02-12 10:57:50
A:
If you need Forrester to tell you what the best SCM is, then you're already in trouble. Any idiot "analyst" can put together a fantastic report on the amazing management functions MKS provides, but ask a developer worth his/her salt who has ever had to use MKS would never recommend it.
MKS managed to completely botch the Eclipse/WSAD integration (SVN/CVS integrates flawlessly).
MKS is the biggest steaming pile of crap I've ever used for SCM (and that's saying a lot as I've also used Microsoft Visual Source Safe in its early days).
Yes, Subversion is not "free" to support, but anybody can set it up and any sysadmin with half a brain could administer it and do appropriate backups.
It's up to you though. If you want to please management and pick the "right" choice that ticks all the boxes, go with MKS. If you want your developers to actually get some work done, then go with SVN all the way.
But, having had to use MKS, I'll second the earlier poster on CruiseControl for CI which does work, but it's a bit dated.
Justin
2010-05-04 16:41:20