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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Version Control
  4. Version Control System
  5. Plastic SCM vs SVN (Subversion)

Plastic SCM vs SVN (Subversion)

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

SVN (Subversion)
SVN (Subversion)
Stacks791
Followers629
Votes43
GitHub Stars614
Forks188
Plastic SCM
Plastic SCM
Stacks40
Followers75
Votes17

Plastic SCM vs SVN (Subversion): What are the differences?

Key Differences between Plastic SCM and SVN (Subversion)

Plastic SCM and SVN (Subversion) are both version control systems commonly used in software development. However, they differ in several key aspects:

  1. Scalability: Plastic SCM offers better scalability compared to SVN. Plastic SCM uses a distributed model that allows for decentralized development and better handling of large codebases. SVN, on the other hand, uses a centralized model, which can limit scalability for larger teams and projects.

  2. Branching and Merging: Plastic SCM provides more advanced branching and merging capabilities than SVN. Plastic SCM supports true branching and merging, enabling developers to create and manage branches more efficiently. SVN, on the other hand, uses a copy-modify-merge model, which can be more complex and error-prone when dealing with branching and merging.

  3. Performance: Plastic SCM generally provides better performance compared to SVN. Plastic SCM uses a database backend and optimized algorithms, which results in faster operations and better responsiveness. SVN, on the other hand, can be slower, especially for larger repositories or when dealing with complex operations.

  4. Visualization: Plastic SCM offers comprehensive visualization tools that enable developers to visualize and understand the structure and history of their codebase easily. These visualizations include branch graphs, change sets, and live metrics. SVN, on the other hand, lacks such comprehensive visualization capabilities.

  5. Flexibility: Plastic SCM offers more flexibility in terms of the supported workflows and integration with other tools. Plastic SCM supports various workflows, including Git-like workflows, which provides developers with more options to choose from. SVN, on the other hand, follows a more traditional centralized workflow and has limited integration options.

  6. Security: Plastic SCM provides better security features compared to SVN. Plastic SCM offers advanced access control mechanisms, including fine-grained permission controls and encrypted communication, ensuring that only authorized users can access and modify the repository. SVN also supports access control, but its capabilities are not as advanced as Plastic SCM.

In summary, Plastic SCM offers better scalability, advanced branching and merging capabilities, improved performance, comprehensive visualization tools, enhanced flexibility, and superior security features compared to SVN.

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Advice on SVN (Subversion), Plastic SCM

Kamaldeep
Kamaldeep

CEO at Zhoustify Agency

Nov 13, 2020

Decided

SVN is much simpler than git for the simple stuff (checking in files and updating them when everyone's online), and much more complex than git for the complicated stuff (branching and merging). Or put another way, git's learning curve is steep up front, and then increases moderately as you do weird things; SVN's learning curve is very shallow up front and then increases rapidly.

If you're storing large files, if you're not branching, if you're not storing source code, and if your team is happy with SVN and the workflow you have, I'd say you should stay on SVN.

If you're writing source code with a relatively modern development practice (developers doing local builds and tests, pre-commit code reviews, preferably automated testing, preferably some amount of open-source code), you should move to git for two reasons: first, this style of working inherently requires frequent branching and merging, and second, your ability to interact with outside projects is easier if you're all comfortable with git instead of snapshotting the outside project into SVN.

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Detailed Comparison

SVN (Subversion)
SVN (Subversion)
Plastic SCM
Plastic SCM

Subversion exists to be universally recognized and adopted as an open-source, centralized version control system characterized by its reliability as a safe haven for valuable data; the simplicity of its model and usage; and its ability to support the needs of a wide variety of users and projects, from individuals to large-scale enterprise operations.

Plastic SCM is a distributed version control designed for big projects. It excels on branching and merging, graphical user interfaces, and can also deal with large files and even file-locking (great for game devs). It includes "semantic" features like refactor detection to ease diffing complex refactors.

-
Distributed version control system;Branch Explorer;Semantic Version Control;Locking;Huge files;Big projects;GitSync;Super strong merging;Partial replica;ACL security;Database backends
Statistics
GitHub Stars
614
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
188
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
791
Stacks
40
Followers
629
Followers
75
Votes
43
Votes
17
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 20
    Easy to use
  • 13
    Simple code versioning
  • 5
    User/Access Management
  • 3
    Complicated code versionioning by Subversion
  • 2
    Free
Cons
  • 7
    Branching and tagging use tons of disk space
Pros
  • 8
    Wanna do Branch per Task Dev? Plastic rocks it
  • 4
    No Size limite
  • 2
    Simple, easy to use interfaces. Resilient and solid
  • 2
    File Locking
  • 1
    Very fast
Cons
  • 1
    Doesn't have file staging
  • 1
    No dark theme
  • 1
    Can't place windows next to each other to save space
  • 1
    Keyboard shortcuts are lacking
  • 1
    Adds files with only changed timestamp to pending
Integrations
No integrations available
Gluon
Gluon
TeamCity
TeamCity
Jenkins
Jenkins
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio
Visual Studio

What are some alternatives to SVN (Subversion), Plastic SCM?

Git

Git

Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.

Mercurial

Mercurial

Mercurial is dedicated to speed and efficiency with a sane user interface. It is written in Python. Mercurial's implementation and data structures are designed to be fast. You can generate diffs between revisions, or jump back in time within seconds.

Pijul

Pijul

Pijul is a free and open source (AGPL 3) distributed version control system. Its distinctive feature is to be based on a sound theory of patches, which makes it easy to learn and use, and really distributed.

DVC

DVC

It is an open-source Version Control System for data science and machine learning projects. It is designed to handle large files, data sets, machine learning models, and metrics as well as code.

Magit

Magit

It is an interface to the version control system Git, implemented as an Emacs package. It aspires to be a complete Git porcelain. While we cannot (yet) claim that it wraps and improves upon each and every Git command, it is complete enough to allow even experienced Git users to perform almost all of their daily version control tasks directly from within Emacs. While many fine Git clients exist, only deserve to be called porcelains.

Replicate

Replicate

It lets you run machine learning models with a few lines of code, without needing to understand how machine learning works.

isomorphic-git

isomorphic-git

It is a pure JavaScript reimplementation of git that works in both Node.js and browser JavaScript environments. It can read and write to git repositories, fetch from and push to git remotes (such as GitHub), all without any native C++ module dependencies.

Git Reflow

Git Reflow

Reflow automatically creates pull requests, ensures the code review is approved, and squash merges finished branches to master with a great commit message template.

Gitless

Gitless

Gitless is an experiment to see what happens if you put a simple veneer on an app that changes the underlying concepts. Because Gitless is implemented on top of Git (could be considered what Git pros call a "porcelain" of Git), you can always fall back on Git.

BitKeeper

BitKeeper

BitKeeper is a fast, enterprise-ready, distributed SCM that scales up to very large projects and down to tiny ones.

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