Version Control System

Synopsis

We need to move off of CVS soon.

We're moving to Git.

The rest of the information here is of historical interest.

Systems

The big three

• Git - all the cool kids are using it these days (C)
• Mercurial/Hg (python)
• Bazaar - Canoical/Ubuntu/Launchpad (python)

The dark horses

• monotone (C++)
• Darcs (haskell)

Not considering

• Subversion, if we're going to migrate, it might as well be to something better enough to bother
• Codeville, its dead jim
• Vesta, commercial abandonware, not distributed
• Aegis - a strange beast. Probably not for us.

Requirements

• Import from CVS, preserving history (not just tips of our three branches)
• Web interface not completely unlike viewvc.cgi
• Good support for moving/renaming files and whole directories (i.e. preserving history)
• Useful versions (incl. viewvc.cgi-alike) utility in Debian stable or backports (bzr: no)
• What else?

References

• Zooko [1]
• Version control blog [2]

• Smashing magazine [3]
• Wikipedia [4]
• DCVS round up [5] [6] [7]