SCM Comparisons

The AccuRev Advantage over other Software Configuration Management (SCM) and Version Control Systems

AccuRev improves developer productivity, traceability, reusability and quality. Additionally, it allows development teams to be more self-managing, and naturally makes more ways of working possible. When it’s time to change SCM tools, the question is whether to do a simple “tool upgrade,” or should the process issues be addressed as well?

AccuRev addresses the underlying architectural limitations of legacy branch and label-based tools, enabling the optimization of your software development processes for more efficient parallel, geographically distributed, and agile development environments.

Support for Complex Parallel and Distributed Development

AccuRev	ClearCase	Subversion	Perforce
Graphical StreamBrowser provides complete visibility of the software development process and simple graphical branch and merge operations	Base ClearCase requires expertise in creating branches and views and merging changes between them. UCM simplifies the complexity but also constrains development processes	Branches displayed as folders—no global view of the software development process; branches are easy to create but graphical merge capabilities are limited	Branches displayed as folders—no global view of the software development process; branches are easy to create but graphical merge capabilities are limited
Dynamic restructuring capabilities through a drag-and-drop operation	No dynamic restructuring capabilities	No dynamic restructuring capabilities	No dynamic restructuring capabilities
Built-in private branching supports SCM best practices	Private branches must be created and maintained manually	Private branches must be created and maintained manually	Private branches must be created and maintained manually
Full namespace support to track and merge changes involving file and directory moves and renames	Full namespace support	Namespace changes are not handled appropriately during a merge	Namespace changes are not handled appropriately during a merge
Data Sheet	Competitive Analysis	Competitive Analysis	Competitive Analysis
Watch Demo	Watch Use Cases	Watch Use Cases	Watch Use Cases

Integrated Change and Configuration Management
AccuRev	ClearCase	Subversion	Perforce
Robust integration between SCM and issue tracking with built-in change packages	Base ClearCase requires triggers to integrate with issue tracking; UCM has built-in integration	Revision numbers are used as change sets to provide basic change tracking	Changelists integrated with Perforce jobs provide basic change tracking
Complete change-based workflow fully supports Agile and other task-based methodologies	UCM provides a standard usage model that is not suitable for all software development methodologies	Change sets do not allow developers to easily work per change instead of per-file	Job functionality has limited workflow capabilities
Merge by change package functionality without the need for scripting	Base ClearCase requires scripting to merge by change set; UCM provides change set merging capabilities, but users are confined to the UCM usage model	Scripts needed in order to merge by change set	Scripts needed in order to work effectively by change set
Complete visibility of which change packages have been merged into each software configuration	Limited visibility and traceability of changes, especially when multiple change sets are merged simultaneously	Change set merges must be tracked manually by revision log comments or file attributes	Only partial visibility into which jobs have been merged into each branch