Thanks for the insight Alan and Joseph.  And for the record, I am not a 
fan of VSS.  The only think I like about VSS is the shadow folders and 
that is the only thing I wish CVS had.


Alan Dayley wrote:

>On Wednesday 18 May 2005 08:12 pm, Don Calfa wrote:
>  
>
>>How would subversion be better?  Isn't a binary file a binary file a
>>binary file as far as versioning systems?
>>    
>>
>
>http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.0/apas08.html
>
>"In the most general sense, Subversion handles binary files more 
>gracefully than CVS does. Because CVS uses RCS, it can only store 
>successive full copies of a changing binary file. But internally, 
>Subversion expresses differences between files using a 
>binary-differencing algorithm, regardless of whether they contain textual 
>or binary data. That means that all files are stored differentially 
>(compressed) in the repository, and small differences are always sent 
>over the network."
>
>  
>
>>I know that Visual Source Safe is pretty awful in a worst case scenario
>>rebuild whereas CVS can be rebuilt fairly easy in case of a
>>catastrophic failure.
>>I haven't worked with subversion but from reading a competing
>>versioning system marketing, subversion stores it's repository
>>information in the same data mess that VSS has.
>>    
>>
>
>Subversion does use a database on the back end.  It has a facility to dump 
>the database to a text backup file and import the same.  Doing this along 
>with standard backup procedures makes it pretty safe.  Also, they were 
>very close or already have a change with a filesystem on the back end 
>instead of a database, just as CVS does.
>
>  
>
>>I don't see how storing a binary file with a timestamp is a bad thing
>>even if it does grow rather fast.  Disks are cheap today at $.50 a gig.
>>    
>>
>
>Storing binaries in CVS is still beneficial, don't get me wrong.  
>Timestamps, logs, tagging, etc. all work just fine and are very useful.  
>I just wanted to warn about the lack of a diff and that the repository 
>will grow pretty fast.  If you want to provide the storage required, go 
>for it.  Subversion was designed to overcome these weaknesses in CVS.
>
>All of this is stated by one who uses CVS every day and really, really 
>likes it over VSS.
>
>Alan
>---------------------------------------------------
>
>  
>

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