The Flying Jalapeño Lives

I have been using Xcode’s integrated subversion SCM for several months (against the advice of several articles). Overall, it has been pretty painless. Xcode has a simple set of svn functions, but meets 90% of my needs.  The biggest advantage is the integration within the IDE.  Moreover, if I needed advanced functionality, I could always go to the command line. So, I lived, and loved, with Xcode over the next few months.

I originally decided to try Xcode after some experience with Versions.app, my first SCM experience. Versions is a collaboration between Pico and Sofa. I used Versions during it’s beta. At this time, I was painfully inexperienced with version control. I frequently went back and forth between Versions and Terminal, picking up what I needed along the way.

Eventually, when Versions went 1.0, I made the decision to not purchase it. I could never get Versions to display all of the change logs of a working copy if it hadn’t existed locally since the creation of the repository. As I said, I wasn’t the best with svn at this time. I probably just couldn’t find the control to download the logs from the repository, but it shouldn’t have been that difficult nonetheless. This was something that should have happened “automagically”.  This and a few other quirks didn’t make a good value (for me) over Xcode and the command line.

Flash forward to last week when my repository host, beanstalk, sent a notice they were upgrading all repositories to subversion 1.5. This influenced me to look into upgrading my client side software to use 1.5 as well. At first, I figured I would just patch Xcode to use 1.5, but that seemed unnecessarily complicated. So once again, I decided to try an external solution, but armed with a much better understanding of my work flow and subversion itself.

I downloaded new demos of both Versions and Cornerstone. I had briefly looked at Zennaware‘s offering before, but this time I was able to examine it much more thoroughly. I setup Cornerstone first, and to be honest, I haven’t looked back.

Before I move on, this seems like a good place to get 2 (related) points of contention out of the way: DVCS (Git and Mercurial) and SCM GUIs.

I’ll address my need for a GUI first: I want a seamless and easy way to perform my version control. I already perform enough tasks extraneous to actual programming. I want this part of my workflow to be “point and click”, allowing me to focus more on delivering code.

As far as DVCS: I realize that Git is the new “hotness”. At this time, I operate primarily as a solo shop. Additionally, I now know how to get around svn just fine. For me there is no overwhelming advantage that switching to Git would provide at this time. I am almost never working out of internet range and I don’t collaborate very often. Moreover, there is no “great” GUI for Git yet. I am sure one is eminent, taking in account GitHub as an example of Git’s growth in both marketshare and mindshare.

Back to Cornerstone.

I really like its layout. It matches up extremely well with my “mental” picture version control.

The side bar is split: working copies up top, and repositories on the bottom. This is in contrast to Versions where the repositories are like “folders” and the working copies are subfolders.

The main window contains a file browser for the selected repository or working copy. When I pressed the space bar, I got a nice surprise: Quick Look. Located along the top of the main window are quick filters for “changed”, “modified”, “unversioned”, etc… These make it super easy to filter a long list of files.

When you make a commit, Cornerstone automatically asks if you want to begin versioning any files not added to the repository. Sweet.

By clicking a checkbox, you can automatically setup your repository with the default trunk, branches, and tags folders. You can also set ignore files just as easy.

Corenerstone has an entirely different window devoted to file history. Simply select one or more files within the file browser and click the history button. You are then presented with a graphical timeline with a “node” for each past revision. Select any 2 nodes and they are opened for file comparison.

This presentation does have some drawbacks. Primarily, it just doesn’t scale well. Each file has its own timeline at the top of the window. This works well for a few files, as you can see. View many, though, can be cumbersome. It is possible to view a timeline for just the root folder of the repository which cleans it up a bit, but this wasn’t an immediately obvious solution.

Corenerstone has a decent comaparison engine built into the app. Versions performs its comparisons by using an external app of your choosing. I know many users love this because it enables them to use their favorite comparison tool. Personally, I prefer the speed of Cornerstone’s implementation. With a single click, I can compare any local changes to the latest revision.

When packing a large amount of information in to a GUI, some items will become focal points, while others will move to the periphery. For me, it appears as if commit messages and change sets are presented as second class citizens in this Corenerstone’s UI. They are regulated to a small info pane whose purpose wasn’t readily apparent. Versions, on the other hand, has the change sets and commit messages beautifully laid out in a seperate view.

I imagine that when I stop working on a 13″ Macbook and have a larger 24″ desktop, it won’t matter so much. This will also allow me to evaluate Cornerstone’s ability to switch froma an all-in-one mode to a multi-window mode, ala Xcode. With a large and/or multi-monitor setup, these issues will likely disappear. My interface complaints are mostly my fault for developing on a contrained consumer laptop.

Speaking of hardware limitations, Cornerstone did not seem to be bothered by the specs of my development machine. Not that you would expect a subversion application to give a modern Mac any such issues. All the same, I haven’t noticed any interface delays, network hangs, excessive disk access, or any other performance problems. This clearly demonstrates the skill, care, and time investment of the developer, who from my understanding operates a single-man shop.

Cornerstone’s interpretation of the svn domain is the most solid out of the apps I have seen (although I admit to not diving as deeply into all other solutions). I am currently running Cornerstone in its demo period and plan to purchase it soon. It has definitely made subversion painless to use while packing a fair amount of power into its interface. If you are seeking a powerful GUI for subversion, Cornerstone is the best you can get.