Subversion

It's such an awesome tool... I've worked with a handful of version control systems over the years. I've worked with Visual Source Safe (VSS), I've worked with Perfoce that supposedly was the kernel for VSS years ago (Microsoft licensed the code for their branch like they did with Sybase when they made SQL Server), I worked with Starteam briefly many years ago, I've obviously worked with Subversion and now I'm working with another version control tool from Seapine called Surround SCM.

I so miss SVN...

Of the at least 4-5 version control packages I've worked with, SVN is the only one I actually want to work with. Surround SCM is GARBAGE. So were VSS and Perfoce and probably Starteam though I don't remember it very well. I can't speak for CVS because not being a unix guy I haven't used it, but if it's anything like these others, it sucks too.

I can't just look at a file anymore to see what's in it... if I just have a casual curiosity, without having any intention of editing the file, I just want to see what it does, when I click to open it in Dreamweaver now I'm ACCOSTED by a complicated dialog box DEMANDING that I CHECK OUT the file and inquiring what my purposes are for doing so... I don't want or need to check out the file and I certainly don't need to be bonked over the head with a librarian's desk reference every time I want to see what's in it. Just looking at a file is like being in high-school again and having to undergo an interrogation from my prom date's father. "Ding-Dong! Who are you?! What are your intentions with this file?! Quick, speak up!" It makes me not want to open files honestly -- and therefore, makes me not want to work.

There's also as far as I can tell no way for me to see what files I have checked out! I've been all over both their help files and Google looking for a way to just get a list of files I have checked out and nada! Great, so here I have this project with HUNDREDS of directories and yeah, truthfully I'm not really editing in all of those directories, but I am editing in a lot of them... and it'd be frickin' nice, if the software that controls my versioning and MUST by its very nature know what I have checked out, tell me which files and in which directories are checked out so I can check them in. I have a couple of options. I can check in an assload of files all at once, INCLUDING somehow mostly files that I didn't check out in the first place! Or I can weed through 20+ directories opening each one to see if any of the files are marked and hoping that the flakey engine that marks them is actually working.

At least with TortoiseSVN when the marking engine wasn't working very well (it's improved with recent versions), when I asked it to commit a directory it would scan the subdirectories and tell me what I had checked out and what wasn't in the repository correctly, irrespective of the marks. Surround has no such common courtesy. And it's only made worse by the fact that when I commit, I'm being asked to commit to "change logs"?! First of all, committing something to a version repository IS A CHANGE LOG. If it was out and it changed and then it went back in with changes, that's a change log! There is no need to separate them. It's like separating dogs into "dogs" and "more dogs". And then to make matters worse, once I've committed the files to a change log, I then am forced to COMMIT THE CHANGE LOG! As a wholly separate action that can't be performed in Dreamweaver, forcing me to keep the Surround SCM client open constantly. And god forbid I accidentally try change and commit a file (that I AM ALLOWED TO CHECK OUT) that's already in an existing change log that hasn't been committed.

Why do we demand that everything that is simple and good be complicated until it SUCKS and makes you want to jump off a bridge?