Comments on: Zdot Podcast : Why Subversion Rocks

By: Ed Gibbs

Ed Gibbs — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 02:58:53 +0000

Thanks for the fuller explanation. Sounds like it was a really nasty manual process. This just pushes me a little further towards swapping out Subversion for CVS in my shop.

We have a much simpler build/deploy cycle for even our largest products so we probably wouldn’t see a 92% improvement, but any little improvement helps.

By: Ron Bieber

Ron Bieber — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 12:19:54 +0000

The calculation is a labor calculation and signifies the reduction in man hours required to manage a build and deploy process for a rather large software application that was, for all intents and purposes, extremely manual. The amount of automation we added was significant, and included software we wrote internally that works alongside the CruiseControl and Subversion programs to manage the actual deployment of the software and provide the ability to abstract and wrap in a GUI the functions of branching the source base and keeping track of what build is in what environment at a given time. Unfortunately, we do not have the ability to release these applications as open source, even though I would love to. However, the supplemental software was written in a mix of open source languages including PHP, PERL, Python, Java/Tomcat and C (all of which figure into another calculation of licensing cost avoidance that has not been done as of yet). The eclectic use of languages reflects what I or one of my direct reports were actually learning at the time the software was being developed. When you have a highly manual process with a lot of wasted man hours, its pretty easy to hit a 92% number. The effect Subversion had on our environment is documented on the Subversion Testimonial page. This is still pretty non-specific as to the activities we actually performed, but does give some more information as to the advantages we found in Subversion over CVS, including the reduction in build times we experienced. Subversion and CruiseControl weren't the full solution that enabled the labor reduction, however they were key components.

By: Mark W. Shead

Mark W. Shead — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 02:53:06 +0000

Why Subversion Rocks

This guy says that using Subversion and Cruisecontrol cut their costs by 92%. It would be interesting to see how he calculated this. Regardless, it is amazing how many quality tools are available for free now.
Why Subversion Rocks
In a recent study…

By: Ed Gibbs

Ed Gibbs — Sun, 24 Jul 2005 18:50:39 +0000

We’ve adopted an automated build process with CruiseControl and we’re in process of rolling it out to all our web projects including the smaller 1-2 developer projects. I’d love to see a post explaining how you got to the figure of about 92% cost reduction. Being able to quantify these practices is always a big help.