Apache Subversion vs. Review Assistant

Subversion solves our software versioning problem by providing tools for conflict resolution when doing collaborative work on the same files and projects. We use it with TortoiseSVN and it works great for some of our projects with smaller teams. However, we have a need to make code reviews more and it is a little more difficult to do that in SVN, compared to Bitbucket and Git.

Incentivized

Combined with Code Compare and running Review Assistant on the TFS server, it provides a good way to share code and comments amount our team. It does everything we need it to do for code reviews and has a reporting tool.

• Track and control concurrent versions of the same files.
• Has good support from many different software, including visualization, DevOps toolchain.
• Well documented and understood by developers as it has been around for a long time.

Incentivized

• Review Assistant does everything that I was hoping the default Visual Studio reviews would do. The iterations through accept/reject were the key winner.
• The functionality for code reviews is great, especially the ability to comment on specific lines of code.
• You don't have to leave the IDE.

• Refactoring the layout of a respoitory--or a part of a repository--can be a bit painful, especially for users with workspaces associated with the affected part of the repository. Not sure what could be done to make that better, but it would be nice if something was possible.
• Folks coming from Git can have problems using Subversion. Again, not sure anything can (or should) be done to address that, but it is occasionally an issue.

Incentivized

• Integration with JIRA is missing.
• Ability to search, filter and order comments.
• There is no support for Visual Studio Code.

While there are interesting alternatives, such a GIT, Subversion has been a breath of fresh air compared to its predecessors like CVS or Microsoft Source Safe (now called Team Foundation Server). Its ease of use and high adoption rate is going to keep me using this product for years to come.

After Microsoft Visual SourceSafe was discontinued, we chose Subversion and it was a great choice. We were able to migrate to Apache Subversion very quickly and easily and benefited immediately from its non-locking workflow (SourceSafe required users to "lock" the file when editing to prevent editing conflicts from other users, whereas Subversion allows multiple users to edit the same file simultaneously and then merge conflicts later.)

While we still use Apache Subversion for our legacy projects, we've migrated to Git and GitHub for our new projects as that is the new "cool kid" and it provides some benefits such as distributed and offline development. But Git is more complex than Apache Subversion and not as easy to learn.

Incentivized

Microsoft provides a handy feature for code review inside the Visual Studio IDE. Review Assistant, though providing a similar code review user experience, supports work scenarios that are not covered by the Microsoft's IDE. Moreover, the version control systems support is broader in Review Assistant.

• It allowed us to deliver the right files to our customer without "clobbering" previous releases, making for a far more satisfied customer.
• It allowed our developers to work on two releases in parallel (plus an occasional third, for emergency fixes).
• With some simple hooks, it allowed us to set up a system where code was was automatically deployed to test servers as soon as developers committed it, making testing easier. This was made easier by virtue of being a ColdFusion project, which requires no compilation. However, that is possible for compiled code with a continuous integration system like Jenkins.

Incentivized

• The tool saves a huge amount of time while reviewing the code. Review Assistant supports threaded comments, so team members can discuss code without scheduled meetings.