Using Plastic SCM for small personal projects?

Question

I've spent the last few evenings researching version control applications, mostly here on SO reading posts and visiting sites. I'm looking for SCM for my own personal hobby C# projects.

I want the version control server local to my PC, have no intention of remote or intranet or multi-user development and would like a VS2010 plug-in, and perhaps Eclipse as well; all of the features Plastic SCM supports in one simple download/install as far as I can tell. But it has far more features and capabilities than I would ever use at home.

If anyone is using Plastic SCM hermit style, do you find it effective as a single developer SCM tool?

Answer 1

Disclaimer: I do not work for Plastic SCM! :P

Well, I'm using Plastic SCM in my company and at home with my personal projects (for 1 year now) and as far as I can tell you, Plastic IS the BEST SCM too ever made by human kind! :) I already used the SVN, TFS, Source Safe (argh..) and a little of git, but very little.

I'm a passionate Plastic user and I can say, to a single developer project or a team, you can rely on Plastic. Everything is done to work perfectly with Visual Studio. Even so, I prefer the Plastic GUI to manage my changes. I just find the Plastic GUI and Explorer Integration much better way to work. I came from a SVN client that had a lot of problem integrating with VS so I changed my way to use SCM tools. The VS plugin, the client and the Explorer Integration does everything that the client does. I just like much more the client.

In Plastic, almost everything is done visually (what you can't do not do visually right now, Plastic's developers are working to develop the GUI to the task!) and very user-friendly. The Distributed Branch Explorer (DBrEx, for us users) is a sweeeeeet peace of code.

The magnificent merge tool helps you to solve problems when merging branches and everything else.

Another WONDERFUL feature is SPEED. Hell yeah, Plastic is FAST! (Pablo, I didn't find the URL to the benchmark against git on Códice Blog, can you add here? :))

The Plastic forum is fast (when I mean fast, I really mean that. They normally ask my questions in a few hours after I post anything), reliable, precise and they help you in whatever you need help. Even if you (like me) are not a paying customer. Since I started using Plastic, they ALWAYS helped me whenever I needed. The contact with the Plastic developers is a wonderful feature. You're not dealing with some guy hired to route the problems to some developer you may never see or speak, you always we'll be dealing, asking questions, suggesting new features to the developers! It is amazing!

Plastic uses a multi-database back-end, so if you're working on Windows, you can stick with SQL Server CE or SQL Server Express or the paid SQL Server versions. You don't like SQL Server? You can still use MySQL, Oracle, Firebird, SQLite and PostgreSQL. The database back-end is easy to backup, with a few steps you can backup it daily.

If you're working with a small team or big teams, you can use the integrated Code Review tool. It's pretty cool!

You can integrate your development tasks to various Issue Management Systems (Jira, Version One, OnTime, Bugzilla, Mantis, Trac, RallyDev, DevTrack, FogBugz).

You can use the Transparent SCM feature so you're able to detect changes outside Visual Studio or Eclipse.

Well, I guess I can speak for hours and hours here... So, if you have any question about my experience using Plastic, just ask!

I hope my testimonial helps you! :)

Answer 2

Disclaimer: I work for Plastic SCM!

Plastic is going to be very useful for you working as a "solo developer". You'll benefit from simple installation, graphics, ability to learn about branching and merging (that you can use even if you work alone, because you can use branches to try out experiments, do bug fixing... and many more), and a really strong (and ever-growing) integration with the IDEs you're using... And, best of all: a more than legendary support!