Comparison PlasticSCM 4 vs TFS2010

[immitev]

Hi,

We've been evaluating PlasticSCM 4 and TFS 2010 as a version control tool for several weeks. Let's ignore for now the fact that TFS 2010 is a lot more than version control system (which some might find good, others bad) and concentrate on its source control features.

I've tried to summarize my impressions in the points below. Obviously those are by no means complete, but are tailored to our situation (we just need to get rid or SourceSafe and replace it with something better, but probably not too different to scare off some developers that have used nothing else). So I am attaching the items in a PDF file, since pasting them in the forum messed up the tabular formatting.

Please correct me if you think I'm wrong about some points. If there are other significant PlasticSCM advantages over TFS 2010, it would be great to share them...

References: Most of the information comes from reading a lot on the web and from limited time trying things myself. About the TFS flaws, a very well researched material is http://www.derekhamm...t-capacity.html and there are others (here and here.)

Plastic SCM vs TFS 2010 as Version Control Tools.pdf

[carpediemevive]

I think you pretty much nailed it. There were two other factors for me when I did my own evaluation. The first was cost. For the benefits that you would get in TFS I couldn't really justify the cost, especially if I assumed I would continue to upgrade every two years, as seems to be the general rule with Microsoft these days. The second was a general agile factor. The more and more I adopt Microsoft as a solution the less and less I find myself able to use and embrace other technologies. Getting around the Microsoft-lock-in wasn't a huge factor in the decision, but it could have been the straw on the proverbial camel had it come to that.

[psantosl]

Hi all!

As a core Plastic SCM developer, this is a really, really exciting read!! Thanks for taking the time to share it!!! We're a small but highly motivated team, and having a community of users like you is really encouraging.

I'd like to add some points to the comparison:

• I humbly think our Branch Explorer should score "awesome" compared to whatever TFS has! . Have you seen the "distributed branch explorer"
  
• The folks at Visual Studio in Redmond said last week "awesome" several times seeing our Visual Studio integration! I'd like to know what are we lacking to score "excellent"
  
• Shelvesets: we're going to release "shelve" support (like git stash but able to be shared on server so, the good of TFS + the good of Git) before February 2012 ends
  
• Annotation: question: what do we need to improve to score "excellent"?
  
• Distributed: hey, you missed the biggest, greatest feature of all! Plastic SCM is the only commercial distributed version control in the market! You can enable as many scenarios as you can imagine ranging from multi-site to pure DVCS!!
  
• Servers and clients running on Windows (even 2000), Linux, MacOS X (and even Solaris SPARC, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and many more!!)
  
• Multiple database backend support: TFS only uses SQL Server, Plastic can use: SQL Server, SQL Server Compact Edition, MySQL, Postgres, SQLite, Oracle, Firebird, Firebird Embedded...
  

Really thanks you for sharing this!!

pablo

[immitev]

Here is my comment on a couple of the points (better late than never)

I agree that Distributedis one of the biggest thing about PlasticSCM, it's just not necessary in our workflow.

A couple of things that could be improved:

1) The biggest hindrance is that VS.NET Pending Checkins is very slow for big code bases like ours (up to 30 minutes). With PlasticSCM support, it was figured out that the private files have serious impact here. Deselecting the options that shows them solved the issue (but only in the PlasticSCM client, since in VS.NET this option is always ticked). Here are some stats about the repository: 700 MB in 18K Files in 2K Folders. But there are a lot of private files - after building we have a total of 6GB in 43K Files in 7.5K Folders.

2) Annotations - a small but nice feature would be, if the changeset was a link that opens the changeset details (or one could just double-clicking it, without being a link).

Besides those and a couple of bugs that could addressed relatively quickly, I am pretty happy about choosing PlasticSCM to replace VSS.

[manu]

Thank you for all your feedback!

1) The biggest hindrance is that VS.NET Pending Checkins is very slow for big code bases like ours (up to 30 minutes). With PlasticSCM support, it was figured out that the private files have serious impact here. Deselecting the options that shows them solved the issue (but only in the PlasticSCM client, since in VS.NET this option is always ticked). Here are some stats about the repository: 700 MB in 18K Files in 2K Folders. But there are a lot of private files - after building we have a total of 6GB in 43K Files in 7.5K Folders.

Do you think it's possible to arrange a short meeting in order to get more details from your issue?

2) Annotations - a small but nice feature would be, if the changeset was a link that opens the changeset details (or one could just double-clicking it, without being a link).

Actually you can do it! Right click on the annotation and select "Diff contents of changeset X" or you can even diff the whole branch content by clicking in "Diff contents of X branch"

Besides those and a couple of bugs that could addressed relatively quickly, I am pretty happy about choosing PlasticSCM to replace VSS.

Thanks again for your feedback.

[immitev]

1) I've given more details at http://www.plasticscm.net/index.php?/topic/1083-performance-of-pending-changes-in-a-very-large-workspace/page__st__20__gopid__6352#entry6352 . If you need something else to check, ask me, or we might arrange a meeting.

2) At least in VS.NET 2010, I don't get anything on right clicking an annotation (currently I am using version 4.1.10.326).