Question

This question is not asking what revision control software I should use. Rather, I would like to hear what you think are the downsides of some of the SCMs you’ve used.

Websites and marketing material only highlight the advantages, but I want to hear from people who have actually used it what they think are the downsides.

Can you name some quality or behaviour you find annoying or counter-productive in an SCM you are using or have used?

Answer 1

In my last two jobs I have been required to use IBM’s Rational ClearCase and counting the ways in which this deficient and frustrating package saps my will to live on a daily basis would take me at least a week. Off the top of my head my main complaints are:

1. No concept of a unit of work. If I check in ten changed files to fix a bug or add a feature there is no way of viewing those changes as a group ever again. Even if they have the same check in comments.
2. Dynamic views will occasionally disappear on a reboot. Without going into details this means that files that other applications may rely on have a less than 50% chance of being there still when you restart your machine.
3. If I check in code into my branch and then merge back into main it won’t automatically check it into main with the same comment. This means that if I want well commented checkins on the main branch I’m constantly repeating myself.
4. Practically no integration with Visual Studio (apparently this is better in 7.1, but of course we haven’t upgraded to that yet)
5. A rather fast and loose idea of UI consistency with some dialogs having buttons down the right hand side and some along the bottom. Also some windows that really need to be resizeable (contain long filenames) aren’t.
6. Rarely (but often enough that this has happened at least once to everyone I’ve spoken to in both companies) ClearCase will decide to add a random character into the middle of XML files.
7. The fact that IBM change $4,600 per license for this, and people pay it.

There are literally dozens more niggles which drag my productivity away from me as I have to fight the tool, and there is a good chance that I will come back and edit this post as a way of venting my daily frustration with this.