GameMonkey Script

I've been tinkering a little with Bazaar and come to the conclusion that it may be the best Version Control System ever.
In its raw form, it is a cross platform, command line VCS. It is a distributed system with a simple command interface and feature set that just works. It is flexible enough to work however you want to, scaling well from single user to small local or remote team collaboration, to large local or distributed projects.

Oh, and it's free and open source!

The current builds and plugins work acceptably with Windows (I believe they handle mixed case file names and differing line endings). A Tortoise version of BZR makes it as easy to use as SVN.

Bazaar
http://bazaar-vcs.org/

Tortoise Bazaar for Windows
http://bazaar-vcs.org/TortoiseBzr

I can't say much more right now as I'm still learning about it. Do browse for more info and read peoples testimonials and comparisons with other VCS. Definitely worth a look if you are after a new VCS or frustrated with your existing one. By the way, I have mostly used Perforce for the last few years.

Other interesting VCS links (particularly if you think SVN is the VCS solution):

Google hosted lecture on Mercurial Project by Bryan O'Sullivan - Interesting talk about VCS and another open source project.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 1317502612

Linus Torvald on GIT - Interesting talk about VCS and motivation for GIT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8

I think I discovered it late last year and quite like it. I like the way it can push out to FTP, effectively giving most people the ability to sync with cheap web space.

So when are we going to get a GameMonkey bzr repo?

Version 2.0 has finally been released.
http://bazaar-vcs.org/Download

The Windows build now includes Bazaar Explorer, a stand alone GUI (based on QBZR), which is somewhat functional. I use this as my main interface.

I am still trialing Bazaar and now use it for two personal projects. I look forward to further interface and performance improvements and to using it in larger projects with more collaboration.

I must say I have become unhappy with Bazaar and am experimentally switching to Git.

Bazaar had a small number of critical issues for my usage, namely some local repository instability, various out of memory crashes, inability to handle large files at all. Additionally, further development of both core and GUI have progressed very slowly.

In the mean time, Git has gained popularity, parity of features and is pretty much unstoppable with Linux fans. SmartGit for various platforms and GitTower for Mac finally promise a pleasant end user experience.

I am still fond of Bazaar and appreciate it's original focus on usability, however after some years of use in both personal and production environments I can no longer recommend it. My thoughts from 2009 have not changed though... "in ten years time, we'll have a wonderful open source distributed version control system".