CSE 403 student quotes about version control

Here are some quotes from CSE 403 students (in Winter 2011) regarding version control. Some teams reported suffering few version control conflicts, but most reported a significant number. Good management will help you avoid most conflicts, but a tool like Crystal will help you avoid even more. We recommend both.

How often did conflicts occur?

Did you ever have to throw away changes because of a conflict?

We strongly recommend learning a merge tool before you have to use it. If you have trouble, don't panic; instead, get help. Thanks to the history saved by distributed version control, you can always abort the result of a merge operation and try again (possibly using a different merge tool).

Note that the same problems would have occurred whether using a centralized version control system such as SVN or a distributed one such as Hg. However, the local history saved by a distributed version control system enables you to choose which version to save, which would have been much harder with a centralized system.

One PM (who also said that she didn't code at all) said the team never ran into conflicts and never had to backtrack or throw anything away, and that SVN worked perfectly. Her team did not have the same experience. This demonstrates how far removed a PM's or non-coder's view might be from reality.