Transitioning from Clearcase to Mercurial (A developer's account)

[Snidely]

On Oct 7, 8:57 am, Masklinn <maskl... at masklinn.net> wrote:
> On 2011-10-07, at 17:05 , Ben Fritz wrote:

> > I had no answer, though, for a few other items. First, the binary
> > files/locking support. This I expected. I know there are some
> > extensions out there for Hg, but the support is well-tested and built-
> > in to SVN. Second, (and not in the list above), the handling of very
> > large files and very large repositories is problematic (I saw a
> > reference to millions of file changes in one SVN commit...I'm
> > skeptical of the need for that, but apparently Git and Hg both puke on
> > that sort of thing...not that ClearCase would do any better).
>
> As far as I know, neither Git nor Hg have good support for this.
>
> On the other hand, in the wider DVCS market SourceGear has
> recently released Veracity[0], and one of the feature it specifically
> adds (at the loss of distribution when it is used) is locking (this
> should not be understood as any endorsement of veracity, I have never
> used it).
>
> But, of course, this issue is only significant if the chances of
> concurrently-edited binary files is high. In my experience, even in
> companies which version their documents it tends not to be that high.
>
> ymmv.
[...]
>
> [0]http://veracity-scm.com/

Eric Sink of Source Gear has just published _Version Control by
Example_ (Pyrenean gold press, ISBN 978-0-9835079-0-1, although I
understand it also available online as a PDF).  I think it does a good
job of laying out what a SCS/VCS is used for.  It talks about SVN (as
a 2nd generation tool) and HG, Git, and Veracity (as 3rd generation).
While he clearly likes his tool best, I think he considers Mercurial
to be very good (and I think he rates it ahead of Git).   He also has
some very good stuff about workflows, such as his chapter 11 on
managing multiple releases.  That chapter looks at several software
release models, including the standard model for commercial products
to the instantaneous-change model of web software.

This book is mainly an introduction to DVCS, aimed at people who do
software but may not have had a formal system or tool (hey, daily
incremental zips to the server can be a useful thing for small
projects).  It also looks like a good way for someone familiar with
one of the covered tools to see how things are done with the other
tools.  It is not intended to make someone a power user in any of the
tools.

Because of publishing lead times, the version of Mercurial used is
1.7.3, but I don't think 1.9.x introduces any great shifts in the
material he covers.  He only shows the command line versions, and
doesn't discuss GUIs.

I'd rate this book as a useful introduction to DVCS, clearly written
and entertaining, and a good overview for someone who might want to
know what the "other brand" is doing.  Anyon else here with a comment
on the book?

By the way, one of the design decisions that went into Veracity was to
support integration with other enterprise tools; that, locks, and
scrum support are briefly discussed in Chapter 9.

/dps