recommendations for version control?

gregw has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Does anyone have suggestions of a package for doing version control for a database-backed Perl/CGI website?

I once used CVS and RCCS for C and ASCII-based applications, but don't feel like I know what's out there that's perhaps a better fit for perl and web environments.

It seems like I'd want something beyond the basics that'd include:

some sort of web interface so designers without shell access can change some of the related files
that'd require some sort of web authentication, not just command-line userids
I'd prefer open source, but would consider alternatives if they are significantly better
something that runs under OpenBSD (or Linux and I can check if it works under OpenBSD)

Thoughts, suggestions?

Comment on recommendations for version control?

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Re: recommendations for version control? by lachoy (Parson) on Apr 06, 2001 at 21:00 UTC
I've found CVS to meet my needs for medium scale Perl projects (> 25,000 lines), medium-size websites (> 1,000 graphic/content files) and for Java projects as well. The fact that it keeps everything in plain-text is a blessing, especially if you've ever had to deal with database-backed products like Microsoft Visual Source Safe. The book Open Source Development with CVS is very good. It briefly discusses the CGI interface CVSweb, which is good enough to be used by all the projects on Sourceforge :-) You can also get native Win32, Mac, Gtk and Java CVS interfaces at the WinCVS site. Chris M-x auto-bs-mode	[reply]
Re: Re: recommendations for version control? by geektron (Curate) on Apr 06, 2001 at 23:51 UTC
CVS defaults to text storage, but it's by no means limited to text. images and other binary files can be stored in it too. i've used CVS on my last three positions - even for large scale webistes ( home.netscape.com was one of them -- before the AOL takeover ).	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: recommendations for version control? by lachoy (Parson) on Apr 06, 2001 at 23:58 UTC
You're right -- 'everything' was far too broad -- binary files are kept as-is, of course. Chris M-x auto-bs-mode	[reply]
Re: recommendations for version control? by arturo (Vicar) on Apr 06, 2001 at 20:56 UTC
Should you decide to go with CVS (and why not?) There are plenty of GUI clients for CVS these days, as well as web interfaces you can plug in. We're using vanilla CVS on our project, but we saw lots of nice things at Cyclic's site. Philosophy can be made out of anything. Or less -- Jerry A. Fodor	[reply]
Re (tilly) 1: recommendations for version control? by tilly (Archbishop) on Apr 07, 2001 at 03:51 UTC
If you want to see what is (almost free) but not CVS, here are a couple of options. The main perl development effort uses something called Perforce. Another almost free option is Bitkeeper. Neither is truly open source. But take a look at them anyways. Both run under OpenBSD. There are many, many version control schemes in development out there. One which I would recommend keeping your eyes on is Subversion. It won't be ready for a bit, but there are serious problems with CVS that simply cannot be fixed. A description of some of what is wrong with CVS can be found here. It is clear that some of the key people in that discussion had not a clue who Simon Cozens is. I would hope that none of them are Perl folks. :-) Anyways that discussion talks a bit about what CVS lacks, and names a few other resources that you might want to look at.	[reply]
Re: recommendations for version control? by arhuman (Vicar) on Apr 06, 2001 at 21:03 UTC
For me the winner is CVS too ! We use it on our linux server (exists on almost all unices including OpenBSD) And for the non unix guys there are several GUI available on other platforms (we use wincvs for windows and mac) "Only Bad Coders Badly Code In Perl" (OBC2IP)	[reply]