Comparison between Vesta

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SCM feature: Vesta Add to comparison: +CVS
+AccuRev
+Aegis
+AllChange
+Arch
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Atomic Commits
Yes. Commits are atomic.
Files and Directories Moves or Renames
Yes. The unit of checkout/checkin is a directory tree. Files and directories can be added, deleted, and renamed between versions.
Intelligent Merging after Moves or Renames
Unknown. FILL IN.
File and Directories Copies
Yes. A new package/branch can be based on any existing version without affecting the past history. (This is also an O(1) operation.)
Remote Repository Replication
Yes. Replication is a fundamental part of the design.
Propagating Changes to Parent Repositories
Yes.
Repository Permissions
Yes. Access permissions for each package (the unit of checkout/checkin) can be different. Access permissions for a branch can be different from the basis package.
Changesets' Support
Not exactly. Vesta uses a related concept of configurations instead, which some has similar properties.
Tracking Line-wise File History
No, but it would be easy to implement a tool that did this, as the Vesta repository provides direct filesystem access to all versions.
Ability to Work only on One Directory of the Repository
Yes and no. The unit of checkout/checkin (called a package) is a directory tree. Most projects use more than one. Once created, a package must be checked out/in as a unit.
Tracking Uncommited Changes
Yes. Intermediate immutable snapshots can be taken during an active checkout (with vadvance). These intermediate versions can be treated just like checked in versions: they can be replicated to other repositories and used as the basis for branches.
Per-File Commit Messages
Not exactly. The unit of checkin is a directory, and commit messages are assigned at that level, not to individual files. Since configurations are also versioned, they also have commit messages.
Documentation
Quite thoroughly (HTML, man pages, published papers, a book-length research report).
Ease of Deployment
Medium to Good. There is a detailed installation guide for setting it up using a binary kit. RPMs and Debian packages have been recently released. There are no dependencies on other software. There is a bootstrap package available to build Vesta from using "make".
Command Set
The command set is unrelated to CVS. Most of the time, users use about 5 commands. Few ever need to know more than about 20 commands.
Networking Support
Networking is inherent to the system. The repository exports both an NFS interface and an RPC interface. The checkout and checkin tools automatically contact a remote repository when required to perform an operation.
Portability
Good. It should be portable to any UNIX system. Currently it runs on Digital/Compaq/HP Tru64 UNIX and Linux on several different CPU architectures. Ports to Solaris and FreeBSD are planned but haven't begun yet.
Web Interface
Yes: Vestaweb.
Availability of Graphical User-Interfaces.
No GUIs are available, but the repository has a C++ API, and it is not hard to write one. (At least three different project-specific ones have been written by users at Compaq and Intel.)
 


Information taken from Better SCM Initiative website by Shlomi Fish (shlomif@iglu.org.il).

Reorganized for usability by Alexey Mahotkin (Version Control Blog) in 2008.

 

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.