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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Version Control
  4. Version Control System
  5. Git vs Plastic SCM

Git vs Plastic SCM

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Git
Git
Stacks343.6K
Followers184.2K
Votes6.6K
GitHub Stars57.1K
Forks26.9K
Plastic SCM
Plastic SCM
Stacks40
Followers75
Votes17

Git vs Plastic SCM: What are the differences?

Git and Plastic SCM are both version control systems used for tracking changes in source code and collaborating on software development projects. Here are the key differences between Git and Plastic SCM:

  1. Distributed vs Centralized: Git is a distributed version control system, which means that each developer has a complete copy of the entire code repository on their local machine. This allows for offline work, faster operations, and better resilience to network outages. Plastic SCM, on the other hand, is a centralized version control system where the code repository is stored on a central server. Developers need to connect to the server to access the codebase and perform version control operations.

  2. Branching and Merging: Git is well-known for its powerful branching and merging capabilities. It allows for easy creation of branches, switching between branches, and merging changes from one branch to another. Plastic SCM also supports branching and merging, but it uses a branch-oriented model that provides features like branch inheritance and branch attributes, making it more suitable for complex project structures and large teams.

  3. Performance: Git is designed to be fast and optimized for performance, especially when dealing with large codebases and extensive histories. It uses efficient algorithms and data structures. Plastic SCM uses a database backend for storing and retrieving code changes. This allows Plastic SCM to handle large files and repositories efficiently, particularly in scenarios where fast database queries are crucial.

  4. User Interface and Integration: Git is known for its command-line interface (CLI), which provides powerful and fine-grained control over version control operations. It also offers GUIs and third-party tools that simplify the usage of Git. Plastic SCM provides a graphical user interface (GUI) as its primary interface, offering a visual representation of the code history, branches, and changes. It also integrates with various IDEs and development tools, providing seamless integration into the development workflow.

  5. Community and Ecosystem: Git has a large and active open-source community, making it highly popular and well-supported. Platforms like GitHub and GitLab are built around Git, offering extensive resources and plugins. Plastic SCM has a smaller user base but provides dedicated support and services, including its own hosting platform.

In summary, Git is a distributed version control system known for its branching model, performance, and extensive community support. Plastic SCM, on the other hand, is a centralized version control system that offers unique features such as a branch-oriented model and a graphical user interface.

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Advice on Git, Plastic SCM

Kamaldeep
Kamaldeep

CEO at Zhoustify Agency

Nov 13, 2020

Decided

SVN is much simpler than git for the simple stuff (checking in files and updating them when everyone's online), and much more complex than git for the complicated stuff (branching and merging). Or put another way, git's learning curve is steep up front, and then increases moderately as you do weird things; SVN's learning curve is very shallow up front and then increases rapidly.

If you're storing large files, if you're not branching, if you're not storing source code, and if your team is happy with SVN and the workflow you have, I'd say you should stay on SVN.

If you're writing source code with a relatively modern development practice (developers doing local builds and tests, pre-commit code reviews, preferably automated testing, preferably some amount of open-source code), you should move to git for two reasons: first, this style of working inherently requires frequent branching and merging, and second, your ability to interact with outside projects is easier if you're all comfortable with git instead of snapshotting the outside project into SVN.

83.3k views83.3k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Git
Git
Plastic SCM
Plastic SCM

Git is a free and open source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency.

Plastic SCM is a distributed version control designed for big projects. It excels on branching and merging, graphical user interfaces, and can also deal with large files and even file-locking (great for game devs). It includes "semantic" features like refactor detection to ease diffing complex refactors.

-
Distributed version control system;Branch Explorer;Semantic Version Control;Locking;Huge files;Big projects;GitSync;Super strong merging;Partial replica;ACL security;Database backends
Statistics
GitHub Stars
57.1K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
26.9K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
343.6K
Stacks
40
Followers
184.2K
Followers
75
Votes
6.6K
Votes
17
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 1429
    Distributed version control system
  • 1053
    Efficient branching and merging
  • 959
    Fast
  • 843
    Open source
  • 726
    Better than svn
Cons
  • 16
    Hard to learn
  • 11
    Inconsistent command line interface
  • 9
    Easy to lose uncommitted work
  • 8
    Worst documentation ever possibly made
  • 5
    Awful merge handling
Pros
  • 8
    Wanna do Branch per Task Dev? Plastic rocks it
  • 4
    No Size limite
  • 2
    File Locking
  • 2
    Simple, easy to use interfaces. Resilient and solid
  • 1
    Very fast
Cons
  • 1
    Always uses automatic conflict resolution first
  • 1
    Adds files with only changed timestamp to pending
  • 1
    Doesn't have file staging
  • 1
    No dark theme
  • 1
    Can't place windows next to each other to save space
Integrations
No integrations available
Gluon
Gluon
TeamCity
TeamCity
Jenkins
Jenkins
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio
Visual Studio

What are some alternatives to Git, Plastic SCM?

Mercurial

Mercurial

Mercurial is dedicated to speed and efficiency with a sane user interface. It is written in Python. Mercurial's implementation and data structures are designed to be fast. You can generate diffs between revisions, or jump back in time within seconds.

SVN (Subversion)

SVN (Subversion)

Subversion exists to be universally recognized and adopted as an open-source, centralized version control system characterized by its reliability as a safe haven for valuable data; the simplicity of its model and usage; and its ability to support the needs of a wide variety of users and projects, from individuals to large-scale enterprise operations.

Pijul

Pijul

Pijul is a free and open source (AGPL 3) distributed version control system. Its distinctive feature is to be based on a sound theory of patches, which makes it easy to learn and use, and really distributed.

DVC

DVC

It is an open-source Version Control System for data science and machine learning projects. It is designed to handle large files, data sets, machine learning models, and metrics as well as code.

Magit

Magit

It is an interface to the version control system Git, implemented as an Emacs package. It aspires to be a complete Git porcelain. While we cannot (yet) claim that it wraps and improves upon each and every Git command, it is complete enough to allow even experienced Git users to perform almost all of their daily version control tasks directly from within Emacs. While many fine Git clients exist, only deserve to be called porcelains.

Replicate

Replicate

It lets you run machine learning models with a few lines of code, without needing to understand how machine learning works.

isomorphic-git

isomorphic-git

It is a pure JavaScript reimplementation of git that works in both Node.js and browser JavaScript environments. It can read and write to git repositories, fetch from and push to git remotes (such as GitHub), all without any native C++ module dependencies.

Gitless

Gitless

Gitless is an experiment to see what happens if you put a simple veneer on an app that changes the underlying concepts. Because Gitless is implemented on top of Git (could be considered what Git pros call a "porcelain" of Git), you can always fall back on Git.

Git Reflow

Git Reflow

Reflow automatically creates pull requests, ensures the code review is approved, and squash merges finished branches to master with a great commit message template.

BitKeeper

BitKeeper

BitKeeper is a fast, enterprise-ready, distributed SCM that scales up to very large projects and down to tiny ones.

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