Re: CVS vs Aegis (Re: More locking, sort of)

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Saturday, September 7, 2002 at 23:30:39 (+1000), Matthew Hannigan wrote: ]
> Subject: CVS vs Aegis (Re: More locking, sort of)
>
> There's a reference sites page which gives 4 sites.
> Not a whole lot.

What do you expect?  There are many factors inhibiting users from
wanting to be listed on such pages.

>  Given the advocacy for Aegos which occurs
> on this and the Aegis list, it's strange to me that
> CVS users seem to be outnumber Aegis users by a huge
> amount.

There are many factors, not the least of which is the herd effect whcih
software engineers are too unfortunately susceptible to.

Note also that CVS has offered a clean interface to remote repository
access for a lot longer than Aegis, and that too has massively
contributed to the herd effect as many software developers are sadly
ignorant of techniques they could use to avoid needing such a feature.

Finally note that not everyone will need the kind of control that Aegis
offers -- for many people CVS is sufficient.

> Anyway, I've printed out the Aegis docs and making my
> way through them.

If you ahve a good software engineer (i.e. someone more skilled in
engineering disciplines than in programming alone) on staff you might
want to get him or her to help you wade through them.

> (I'm a Sysadmin who is looking for an alternative to our
> set of home grown scripts on top of RCS for our developers.)

I would highly recommend reading _everything_ about QEF too (and
especially the technical documentation, papers, and overviews).  It's
got some very similar generic features as Aegis has.

        http://www.qef.com/

Another very interesting tool with similar generic features is Vesta,
originally built by the DEC SRC research labs and used extensively
internally by DEC for very large projects:

        http://www.research.digital.com/SRC/vesta/
        http://www.vestasys.org/

The ideas and goals of these tools will help you get a broader outlook
on how such things can assist in the production of high-quality software
when many developers are involved.

-- 
                                                                Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;            <address@hidden>;           <address@hidden>
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