Re: Use of CVS on large scales

[Ralph Mack]

One thing which has been alluded to but not expanded on adequately -

I have been in a couple of organizations that use ClearCase and in 
both cases it has been necessary to have a team *dedicated* to 
supporting it. It has a definite MIS/central management flavor to it. 
It is too complex to effectively distribute control to the teams.
I generally see CVS as something which the development teams using 
it can support. 

Some things need to be centrally managed - things that nobody sees
except when they aren't done, like backups or maintaining the 
corporate email system. Other things need to be centrally managed
because they coordinate the activities of the corporation as a whole.
Customer problem reporting and resolution are arguably in this category
if the corporation is large and geographically diverse. But source 
control is something which can be effectively distributed among the 
organizations that need it. This is both cheaper and more effective 
than centralizing it.

So, in management buzzwords, provided you do sensible things to keep
control of repositories local to the development teams that use them, 
my sense is that CVS has better Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). 
Of course, CVS has a $300000 head start in TCO over ClearCase right 
out of the gate :-).

Ralph A. Mack