Better SCM : Nice tries but

There are some attempts at creating better version control systems that I think are flawed, and have no chance to provide a better alternative to CVS in the long run.

In this space, I will explain why I believe they are flawed.

Meta-CVS

Meta-CVS provides a sophisticated CVS client that while using unchanged CVS servers, enables some features not present in CVS. The problem with this approach is that all the developers on your projects would have to use the Meta-CVS clients on their machines. You cannot mix Meta-CVS with plain CVS usage. Plus, some inherent flaws of the CVS system (like non-atomicity of commits) are not resolved.

I don't view attempts to keep CVS alive very optimistically. CVS is merely a group of scripts over RCS, that is very limited in what it can do, and so provide little room for improvement. Projects like Subversion aim to provide everything CVS has and more, while requiring an upgrade of the server. I believe upgrading the servers is not such an issue that one has to try and create clients that overcome the servers' inherent deficiencies.

Another downside to Meta-CVS is that it is written in Common LISP. Granted, Common LISP is a very powerful and flexible language. However, it is not very common (pardon the pun) on UNIX and other systems, and few people could be expected to install a client if they need to install it first. If Meta-CVS' author wishes to make it more popular, I strongly advise him to re-implement it in C, Perl, Python or something more standard.

OpenCM

OpenCM is a version control system that was developed as part of the EROS Operating System project. Its homepage says that it is "not as 'feature rich' as CVS, [but] supports some useful things that CVS lacks". The reason I don't like it is that people need all of CVS features, if they wish to convert to a better CVS alternative.

OpenCM seems like an ad-hoc version control system that was written to suit the needs and whims of a specific team. I don't see it becoming shrinkwrap material unless it acquires all of CVS features. I suggest the OpenCM team to take a look at Subversion which aims to provide all of CVS' features and then some, and even eventually acquire the features present in BitKeeper. But it should know how to do everything CVS does.