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Having worked in both git and SVN shops, SVN is adequate as a server-side VCS. Most of the time you don't need branches on the server side. However, using only

Having worked in both git and SVN shops, SVN is adequate as a server-side VCS. Most of the time you don't need branches on the server side. However, using only SVN client-side is absolute misery - no interactive rebasing, local commits, local branches, stashing, or committing specific lines from a file. You absolutely have to use something like git-svn or hg-svn to be productive. The other (and this is a major one) downside of adopting SVN for your org is the dearth of decent tools for code review and collaboration. At a previous company we used Fisheye/Crucible which is seriously not fit for purpose. At another SVN shop I worked at, we emailed patches to each other (seriously). And the lack of quality tooling is down to SVN's declining popularity - there's no market.

jdc0589 8y ago
> most of the time you don't need branches on the server side what?
- jogjayr 8y ago
  You're better off releasing from trunk/head/master than cutting a release branch. And if you are cutting a release branch, you don't need to merge it so SVN branching is adequate, if still unpleasant and awful to use. The only other use-case for server-side branches is collaborating with team-mates on a long-lived feature. Feature flags work well enough for this and you should probably be using them anyway.
gmueckl 8y ago
The lack of good tooling for SVN is because git is so utterly inadequate at doing it's job. So this created a need for a ton of tools that pave over those flaws and now the resulting ecosystem is a money making machine.
- jogjayr 8y ago
  You're saying git is so bad that an ecosystem sprung up to support it? But if it's so bad why would it have a large enough userbase to support that ecosystem? That logic seems backwards.
  - gmueckl 8y ago
    The initial users came because of an enormous hype fueled by "Linus made a VCS" and a weird quasi-religious belief in the community that it is better than anything else in that space. Crazy times back then, really.

jdc0589 8y ago

> most of the time you don't need branches on the server side what?

jogjayr 8y ago
You're better off releasing from trunk/head/master than cutting a release branch. And if you are cutting a release branch, you don't need to merge it so SVN branching is adequate, if still unpleasant and awful to use. The only other use-case for server-side branches is collaborating with team-mates on a long-lived feature. Feature flags work well enough for this and you should probably be using them anyway.

gmueckl 8y ago

The lack of good tooling for SVN is because git is so utterly inadequate at doing it's job. So this created a need for a ton of tools that pave over those flaws and now the resulting ecosystem is a money making machine.

jogjayr 8y ago
You're saying git is so bad that an ecosystem sprung up to support it? But if it's so bad why would it have a large enough userbase to support that ecosystem? That logic seems backwards.
- gmueckl 8y ago
  The initial users came because of an enormous hype fueled by "Linus made a VCS" and a weird quasi-religious belief in the community that it is better than anything else in that space. Crazy times back then, really.