Perforce is an industrial strength source code control system (about $780 retail I think). The good news is they offer a 2 user version for free - perfectly suitable for us indies! Goto http://www.perforce.com/ and download.

They had a booth at ECTS (http://www.ects.com/) in London.

I have used Perforce and although it's more complicated than SourceSafe in terms of the interface...it's also much more useful IMO.

For example, it handles operations such as deleting files from a project and I always loved using the "preview" feature so you could get an idea of how much was going to come down (very useful when working with huge code bases).

I would definitely recommed checking it out if you have been frusterated with SS in the past.
-Scorpio

I've been using Perforce since '98 or '99 or so. It's by far the nicest revision control system I've ever used. It takes some getting used to, but once you're past the initial learning curve it's quick, effortless, and productive.


larry

I've been using CVS for about 4 years now and it seems pretty adequate for many things, what is it about Perforce that makes it stand out against just plain CVS?

I've tried to use CVS and similar in the past but they have been cumbersome to install and work with. Perforce installation was quite simple and the Windows GUI Client is intuitive - there is a small learning curve but once past it, it really wears well.

Perforce is better than cvs for many reasons, but off the top of my head:

Ease of installation
Easy to tell what's in the repository
No need to tell it what's binary and what's not
The bundled diff utility is better
Changelists
Jobs
Speed

The Austin office of Sony Online Entertainment uses Perforce. When I was working there on contract earlier this year, the Perforce server would go down about once a week on average, and sometimes several times a day.

I wouldn't use Perforce again unless compelled. CVS is cross-platform, stable, and free -- and not just for a two-seat version, either. And if you don't like CVS, there are other open-source version control programs, such as Subversion, available at http://scm.tigris.org/.

If you use CVS on windows, be sure to check out the TortoiseCVS client (google it), it's absolutely brilliant.

Peforce well and truly rocks.

We've used it solidly for around 2 years on a 30+ man project with no major trouble.

I know a hell of a lot of people who use it and swear by it.

Best part of peforce? its merge is second to none. I really think it rocks.

i didnt know they did a 2 user license for free though! great stuff!

Phil.

Originally posted by Allen Varney
The Austin office of Sony Online Entertainment uses Perforce. When I was working there on contract earlier this year, the Perforce server would go down about once a week on average, and sometimes several times a day.


A server going down has nothing to do with the software they have there. You can have vcs,perforce,vss,whatever, if the server is going down, everything will go down. We use VSS at work and its more than ok fo rmost tasks, i personally hate cvs. Think its overcomplicated for something that doesn't need to be (tho I do use cvs for my php projects).

I'll try this 2 seat perforce thing and see if it is worth a go

I'll chip in and recommend CVS here too. It's got more bang for buck going for it than any of the other systems...

Cas :)

I wish Alienbrain would also have a free two-user license...

I've used sourcesafe quite a lot and find it pretty much ok and no real problems. The only difficulty we had was that there are 3 of us working fromhome. We tried source offsite which is appalling. We tried using a VPN and sourcesafe which is too slow. Sourcesafe seems to send soooo much data it's not true.

We then tried cvs but got bogged down in the installation and setup.

Then tried alienbrain but it doesn't come with the internet component and was priced out of our league.

Then tried perforce and it's tricky to get your head around the gui at first. That was probably to do with being so use to sourcesafe though and it's terminology. Once it's installed and integrated it's not a problem at all and we've settled on that.

We've had no problems with perforce server crashing or anything.

I'm currently using CVS (both as an indie and in my day job) and I'm fine with it. However, I've run into some limitations. For example, moving stuff around is painful; branch management is not extremely clear.

How does Perforce compare to CVS in these areas? And another requisite, is it multiplatform? Does it run in Linux?

Mattias!

Alien Brain DOES have a free 2 user license I believe.

Its on thier website as AlienBrain Engineer evaluation or something.

I'm fairly sure its 2 user free. I downloaded it, installed it, hated it and deleted it :)

Peforce is the win!

Phil.

I use CVS(WinCVS) because it is stable and is almost a standard in version control. I'm don't like its terminology, however, because terminology used in the CVS documentation and in WinCvs differs from terminology used in other source repository systems. This may confuse a newbie. For example, the Term Release and Revision.

I have used and administrered CVS for quite long (8 years?) and decided to switch to Perforce a few months back due to recomendations and after evaluating the software. I got tired of the hoplaa when renaming directories in CVS. And I had some stability issues with the Windows clients. So far my experience has been positive.

Has anyone tried Subversion?

http://subversion.tigris.org/

The features sound like it's aiming to improve the problems of CVS while remaining open source. And it has a GUI client, as well. Any comments/comparisons?

I currently use VSS, but have used the free 2 client version of Perforce in the past, and it worked great.

The biggest reason why I used perforce is because of the internet accessability feature. It worked great, and was wonderful when I was working with another developer remotely.

Also, the support guys at Perforce were awesome. I will probably go back to it when I need remote access revision control again.

Eric

I know Alienbrain has some features for binary content (images the like). Does anyone know of a free solution that has features geared towards non-text content? Our platform, Virtools, uses visual schematic for scripting everything. As such, there's no real way to plug it into source control systems. It would be nice to get a system in place for the artists to use, though.

Matthew: Perforce and CVS both handle binary data just fine - I've used each on games with several GB of binary data without problem.

Originally posted by Nutter
Matthew: Perforce and CVS both handle binary data just fine - I've used each on games with several GB of binary data without problem.

Are their clients available that preview images within the client itself, and ideally compare different versions of the same file side-by-side? Sorry for my ignorance on the subject, I have very little experience with source control...

Originally posted by triptych
what is it about Perforce that makes it stand out against just plain CVS?
Probably the single coolest feature (at least for teams) is transactional commit.

This feature alone makes it extremely easy for all developers to do frequent check-ins and synchros with the depot/repository without breaking the build.

At my "day job" we've used it for quite a few years now and we never have problems. Not bad for a repository with over 150k files and 52k commits over the last 3-ish years. And like I said, the build will break about once every 3-4 months and it's usuallly for less than 5 minutes, while somebody adds a forgotten file to the repository.

CVS is a great product and it's opensource, but if I were running a dev shop with more than a few developers, I would definitely consider licensing Perforce. I know CVS could do it with little to know problem, but Perforce's ease-of-use is similar to CVS and the integrity is (IMO) a little better -- which makes it easy to convince all the developers they should commit early and often (a character trait I desire in those I work with).

;)

-daniel

I downloaded the Perforce trial version after reading about it here, and I'm very happy with it so far.

I have to shamefully admit that this is the first version control software I've run for my indie project. I'd been relying on simple date-marked backups beforehand. But now Perforce has already come in handy... I made a stupid mistake a couple days ago and spent about an hour trying to track it down, before realizing I could just diff revisions in Perforce and figure out what the problem was. Ah... what the hell was I thinking not using source control? :)

Originally posted by Pyabo
Ah... what the hell was I thinking not using source control? :)

Har! That's pretty much the exact same thing I think everybody says after being introduced to it.

I have a friend who's so anal retentive that he actually keeps most of his /home directory (think "My Documents") under change control, including all of his writings, source, graphics, etc.

-daniel

Originally posted by DCoder
Har! That's pretty much the exact same thing I think everybody says after being introduced to it.


Well, the sad part is that I've used source control at every job I've ever had... I just never bothered to set it up for my own project until this week. heh

anyone been able to setup the vc.net plug in ??? IT works but everytime i try to check in a file, it fails to do so. I can add files easily using the P4Win but vc always fails.