I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: The more I use Sourcegear Vault the more I like it. Nifty features I’ve been using are a right click context menu “Detect new files to add”, the ability to search file by status (such as modified), and the ability to specify difference detection by CRC or by date checked out.
Why the other source control systems I’ve used are worse:
Perforce – Doesn’t have detect new files to add. You can’t search by status through the GUI (if at all?), and differences are determined only by date checked out with the exception of undo checkout of unchanged files. Also hard to use.
Evolution – Doesn’t have a merge tool so I stopped looking.
VSS – Harder to use, although much easier than Perforce. Doesn’t support any of the features I just listed.
CVS and Subversion – Create hidden directories of crap on your harddrive. I believe this is done to avoid CRC checking and to avoid having the per-user data on the server. Whatever the reason, this is unacceptable.
I like that Vault uses a real database to store its data.
The only thing I seriously don’t like is the Microsoft tie-in. Why use Microsoft’s database rather than PostgreSQL which is free? And why depend on IIS? I still don’t understand that one. IIS is for webservers and there is no reason I can think of that you couldn’t program source control without it. Because they use a Microsoft database rather than PostgreSQL and IIS Linux isn’t supported.