A while back I discussed needing to look into a new source control solution for Chef. To recap, CVS had just gotten on my nerves for a few things: file deletion and moving; pretty crappy windows client support (gui); clunky (to me) branch management; and poor infrastructure on my network. I just don’t feel comfortable using it on Chef going forward.
Some of my requirements for the replacement system: stable; reliable; simple backup/restores; good Windows GUI tools for management; inexpensive (read Free); intuitive; good documentation; preferrably a Windows server (to simplify my backups). The two forerunners were a coworker’s recommended, SourceGear Vault, and Perforce. Vault was built as a Visual Source Safe replacement and is free for a single user. Perforce, I learned, is a very popular and robust scm server that is free for 2 users or 5 workstations. After comparing the two for a while I settled on Perforce mostly because it met all of my requirements, and did so in a very elegant and polished fashion. Documentation has been spot-on and things work as advertised. I was able to import Chef, get it backed up and configure Visual Studio’s Source Control integration all in a span of a couple hours. Pretty impressive. Thank you Perforce for the free license.
