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Posted to users@subversion.apache.org by Mike Cepek <mi...@spanlink.com> on 2006/10/19 22:07:25 UTC
Testimonials++
The current SVN testimonials page is nice, but it doesn't give any sense
at all to the NUMBER of developers using Subversion at various sites.
While evaluating various source control products for use by my employer,
I had a sales person for a commercial SCM product make this statement
recently (copied verbatim):
"In regards to 100 devs using SVN, there is no such data
that I have ever seen nor that any other customer, partner
or consulting firm could find. In a respect, you guys are
blazing the trail. All the shops I have dealt with have
migrated off once they get to about 15-20 users [...]"
Try to push for Subversion after Management has heard that... :-(
Now I'm positive that there are many corporate sites with MANY more
developers per SVN server than that. My request is to beef up the
Testimonials page with some information about real companies* using
Subversion to build real products. Any brave souls willing to put their
company name out there? (ask first where necessary, offer void where
prohibited)
(* - Open-source initiatives are a different, since the same quantity of
developers doesn't load a system like salaried employees putting in 40+
hrs every week).
How about a Subversion page with company logos hyperlinked to their web
sites? Maybe offering a little bit of "free advertising" like that
would help a CTO feel ok about making a "disclosure" like this?
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Re: Testimonials++
Posted by Mark <ma...@mitsein.net>.
How about http://opensource.motorola.com? That is SFEE which uses
SVN. It currently shows 1181 registered users.
On 10/19/06, Lieven Govaerts <sv...@mobsol.be> wrote:
> Mike Cepek wrote:
> > The current SVN testimonials page is nice, but it doesn't give any sense
> > at all to the NUMBER of developers using Subversion at various sites.
> >
> > While evaluating various source control products for use by my employer,
> > I had a sales person for a commercial SCM product make this statement
> > recently (copied verbatim):
> >
> > "In regards to 100 devs using SVN, there is no such data
> > that I have ever seen nor that any other customer, partner
> > or consulting firm could find. In a respect, you guys are
> > blazing the trail. All the shops I have dealt with have
> > migrated off once they get to about 15-20 users [...]"
> >
> LOL, which company did that guy represent? With great tools like
> Subversion, TortoiseSVN and Subclipse freely available those sales guys
> from commercial SCM's are right to get very nervous ;)
> > Try to push for Subversion after Management has heard that... :-(
> >
> > Now I'm positive that there are many corporate sites with MANY more
> > developers per SVN server than that. My request is to beef up the
> > Testimonials page with some information about real companies* using
> > Subversion to build real products. Any brave souls willing to put their
> > company name out there? (ask first where necessary, offer void where
> > prohibited)
> The problem is that larger companies typically don't want one of their
> IT guys put internal information on some website, and that's typically a
> global policy for which they don't accept any exceptions.
>
> Without telling you the name of that customer, I've just finished a
> migration project to Subversion for approximately 100 applications with
> some 400 developers working on them. The technologies used in this
> applications include Java/J2EE, VB6, .NET, Oracle (forms, sql, ...),
> Business Objects etc. Our setup of Subversion is a mix of Linux on the
> server and Windows on the client, with integration to Active Directory
> for authorization.
> The developers previously used PVCS so they were mostly not used to the
> Copy-Modify-Merge model of Subversion. After basic training they all
> switched without much of a problem. In fact, their evaluation of our
> Subversion solution was generally very positive.
>
> Now there definitely are more examples of large installations of
> Subversion, yesterday I heard of a company with 1000+ developers on
> Subversion and there definitely are more examples of that.
>
> Your management will probably also require a 2nd/3rd-line support
> contract for Subversion, so you might want to contact a commercial
> company offering Subversion support. I'm sure they can give you better
> case studies.
>
> hth,
>
> Lieven.
>
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>
>
--
Mark
"Blessed is he who finds happiness in his own foolishness, for he will
always be happy."
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Re: Testimonials++
Posted by William Nagel <bi...@stagelogic.com>.
On Oct 19, 2006, at 7:17 PM, Lieven Govaerts wrote:
> Mike Cepek wrote:
>> Now I'm positive that there are many corporate sites with MANY more
>> developers per SVN server than that. My request is to beef up the
>> Testimonials page with some information about real companies* using
>> Subversion to build real products. Any brave souls willing to put
>> their
>> company name out there? (ask first where necessary, offer void where
>> prohibited)
> The problem is that larger companies typically don't want one of their
> IT guys put internal information on some website, and that's
> typically a
> global policy for which they don't accept any exceptions.
I ran into that problem when I was doing the case studies for my
book. I contacted several large Subversion installations, but none
of the people I contacted could convince the powers that be to allow
them to reply to my case study survey, even though I promised to
anonymize the names of any companies that requested it. It's just
one of those unfortunate, but unbreakable policies.
On the other hand, if someone (*cough*CollabNet*cough*) were to fund
a professional polling group to do a survey of the Subversion
landscape, then we might be able to get some real numbers, since a
trusted professional organization, backed by the closest thing to a
corporate face that Subversion has, might be enough to get companies
to -anonymously- contribute data about their installation sizes.
It would have to be a survey performed by professional pollsters,
though. A survey on the web page might produce interesting (and even
accurate) results, but it will never be enough to convince most big
corporate types.
-Bill
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Re: Testimonials++
Posted by Ryan Schmidt <su...@ryandesign.com>.
On Oct 19, 2006, at 20:01, Talden wrote:
>> On Oct 19, 2006, at 18:47, Talden wrote:
>> > Consider that with 1000 devs, committing once a week each you've
>> got
>> > something like one commit every 3 minutes in an 8-hour day. You
>> can't
>> > commit without updating so you update - an update would
>> therefore need
>> > to be guarenteed to complete inside 3 minutes.
>
> On 10/20/06, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>> Not true. You most certainly can commit if you are not at the HEAD
>> revision. You only need to be at the HEAD revision of the files and
>> directories you're currently committing. Of course, if 1000
>> developers are all committing the same files all the time, then you
>> might run into more conflicts than you would like, but I'm not sure
>> that's a realistic scenario.
>
> Being at the head revision requires updating right. Sure you're not
> updating the entire working copy (just the subtree that encompasses
> the full scope of the commit).
>
> So you finish your task, you update, you test, you go to commit.
> Whoops gotta update. Since you only have 3 minutes on average before
> the HEAD advances again, there's no way you can update and do any
> reasonable checking, you just hope there are no adverse interactions
> and commit.
Again, you only have this problem if someone modifies the exact same
files you're commiting within those 3 minutes.
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Re: Testimonials++
Posted by Talden <ta...@gmail.com>.
> On Oct 19, 2006, at 18:47, Talden wrote:
> > Consider that with 1000 devs, committing once a week each you've got
> > something like one commit every 3 minutes in an 8-hour day. You can't
> > commit without updating so you update - an update would therefore need
> > to be guarenteed to complete inside 3 minutes.
On 10/20/06, Ryan Schmidt <su...@ryandesign.com> wrote:
> Not true. You most certainly can commit if you are not at the HEAD
> revision. You only need to be at the HEAD revision of the files and
> directories you're currently committing. Of course, if 1000
> developers are all committing the same files all the time, then you
> might run into more conflicts than you would like, but I'm not sure
> that's a realistic scenario.
Being at the head revision requires updating right. Sure you're not
updating the entire working copy (just the subtree that encompasses
the full scope of the commit).
So you finish your task, you update, you test, you go to commit.
Whoops gotta update. Since you only have 3 minutes on average before
the HEAD advances again, there's no way you can update and do any
reasonable checking, you just hope there are no adverse interactions
and commit.
I'm not suggesting it's a realistic scenario - surely people aren't
working this way...
1000 devs on the one project (not product) would be a nightmare to get
any reasonable release time-frame from. Any product requiring 1000
devs surely should be partitioned into multiple projects for better
management and I expect that a real-world example would show this
quite well.
--
Talden
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Re: Testimonials++
Posted by Ryan Schmidt <su...@ryandesign.com>.
On Oct 19, 2006, at 18:47, Talden wrote:
> Consider that with 1000 devs, committing once a week each you've got
> something like one commit every 3 minutes in an 8-hour day. You can't
> commit without updating so you update - an update would therefore need
> to be guarenteed to complete inside 3 minutes.
Not true. You most certainly can commit if you are not at the HEAD
revision. You only need to be at the HEAD revision of the files and
directories you're currently committing. Of course, if 1000
developers are all committing the same files all the time, then you
might run into more conflicts than you would like, but I'm not sure
that's a realistic scenario.
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Re: Testimonials++
Posted by Talden <ta...@gmail.com>.
> Now there definitely are more examples of large installations of
> Subversion, yesterday I heard of a company with 1000+ developers on
> Subversion and there definitely are more examples of that.
Unfortunately we (the Subversion community) really do need actual
case-studies explaining how they dealt with Subversion issues when
implementing on this scale.
Consider that with 1000 devs, committing once a week each you've got
something like one commit every 3 minutes in an 8-hour day. You can't
commit without updating so you update - an update would therefore need
to be guarenteed to complete inside 3 minutes.
Of course that's not real-world
1. Almost certainly, most devs will commit more than once a week.
2. Commits are not likely to be evenly distributed across the working day.
3. With 1000 devs, you probably don't have them all on one project and
you can easily have one repository per project.
Add to that possibilities that
1. Not all 'devs' are committers (does 'dev' include testers in this
case-study).
2. the 'devs' may not all be in the same time-zone.
I'm sure there are more questions about the reality of a 1000 dev
scenario but my point is, this is exactly what is needed. Not
because the information makes Subversion better (that's dilbert
thinking), but because it makes Subversion less risky (PHB thinking).
It's a shame that companies aren't willing to announce managerial
success by publicising the success of saving money by avoiding
licenses and increasing productivity.
Here's hoping I can, without such material, convince my current
company to move from CVS (which they acknowledge has issues that
subversion resolves) to Subversion which they see as immature and new
due to the lack of decent publicity.
IMHO Subversion has the potential to achieve a landslide victory over
the majority of its competitors if only provided with a little
business thinking now that the important technical thinking has
yielded good results.
--
Talden
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Re: Testimonials++
Posted by Lieven Govaerts <sv...@mobsol.be>.
Mike Cepek wrote:
> The current SVN testimonials page is nice, but it doesn't give any sense
> at all to the NUMBER of developers using Subversion at various sites.
>
> While evaluating various source control products for use by my employer,
> I had a sales person for a commercial SCM product make this statement
> recently (copied verbatim):
>
> "In regards to 100 devs using SVN, there is no such data
> that I have ever seen nor that any other customer, partner
> or consulting firm could find. In a respect, you guys are
> blazing the trail. All the shops I have dealt with have
> migrated off once they get to about 15-20 users [...]"
>
LOL, which company did that guy represent? With great tools like
Subversion, TortoiseSVN and Subclipse freely available those sales guys
from commercial SCM's are right to get very nervous ;)
> Try to push for Subversion after Management has heard that... :-(
>
> Now I'm positive that there are many corporate sites with MANY more
> developers per SVN server than that. My request is to beef up the
> Testimonials page with some information about real companies* using
> Subversion to build real products. Any brave souls willing to put their
> company name out there? (ask first where necessary, offer void where
> prohibited)
The problem is that larger companies typically don't want one of their
IT guys put internal information on some website, and that's typically a
global policy for which they don't accept any exceptions.
Without telling you the name of that customer, I've just finished a
migration project to Subversion for approximately 100 applications with
some 400 developers working on them. The technologies used in this
applications include Java/J2EE, VB6, .NET, Oracle (forms, sql, ...),
Business Objects etc. Our setup of Subversion is a mix of Linux on the
server and Windows on the client, with integration to Active Directory
for authorization.
The developers previously used PVCS so they were mostly not used to the
Copy-Modify-Merge model of Subversion. After basic training they all
switched without much of a problem. In fact, their evaluation of our
Subversion solution was generally very positive.
Now there definitely are more examples of large installations of
Subversion, yesterday I heard of a company with 1000+ developers on
Subversion and there definitely are more examples of that.
Your management will probably also require a 2nd/3rd-line support
contract for Subversion, so you might want to contact a commercial
company offering Subversion support. I'm sure they can give you better
case studies.
hth,
Lieven.
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Re: Testimonials++
Posted by Stefan Küng <to...@gmail.com>.
Mike Cepek wrote:
> The current SVN testimonials page is nice, but it doesn't give any sense
> at all to the NUMBER of developers using Subversion at various sites.
>
> While evaluating various source control products for use by my employer,
> I had a sales person for a commercial SCM product make this statement
> recently (copied verbatim):
>
> "In regards to 100 devs using SVN, there is no such data
> that I have ever seen nor that any other customer, partner
> or consulting firm could find. In a respect, you guys are
> blazing the trail. All the shops I have dealt with have
> migrated off once they get to about 15-20 users [...]"
>
> Try to push for Subversion after Management has heard that... :-(
Maybe that survey will help a little bit:
http://tortoisesvn.net/node/227
Stefan
--
___
oo // \\ "De Chelonian Mobile"
(_,\/ \_/ \ TortoiseSVN
\ \_/_\_/> The coolest Interface to (Sub)Version Control
/_/ \_\ http://tortoisesvn.net
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