Plastic preview 2 is now available
We're very proud to announce the second preview of the upcoming 2.0 release. There's a whole list of new features being unveiled in this version, so please take a careful look here:
http://labs.codicesoftware.com
What would I highlight as the most important new features? Well, I'd suggest you to look into:
Distributed system: yes, now plastic is fully distributed allowing not only full multi-site scenarios with branches being replicated back and forth, but also the ability to sychcronize changes back: yes, you can make changes at the same branch at two sites and plastic will merge them back correctly... Read more here.
MySql backend: I'm specially interested on this one because it really shows one of the core's plastic features: flexibility. Plastic stores all your changes on well-known, rock solid backends instead of relying on hand-made and error-prone file based storage. So far, only Firebird and SQL Server (2005 and higher) were available, but now MySql (it doesn't need an introduction, does it? :-P) is also in the list. Why? Well, it is extremely easy to setup, it scales really well and it opens a whole new world for plastic based on its clustering capabilities... Now installing plastic in solaris or macos is also simpler.
The code review helper system is finally out. It's already been released in the previous preview but not unveiled yet. You can easily inspect changes made on changesets, branches, between labels and so on. We find it useful to run informal walktroughs but it also helps with real inspections.
Change statistics: a nice and dynamic graphic showing what happened to your repository :-).
Multi-server set ups: well, this feature is worth a special release alone... Plastic has been always designed to run with separated workspace and repository servers. Now it has been finally released (and docummented :-) ). What does it mean? Simply put: extreme scalability. Workspace servers manage what's inside developer's directories (remember plastic doesn't leave garbage in hidden directories), and repository servers manage the real data. So far what you've seen has been a server playing the workspace and repository server roles. Now you can finely tune this set up for better performance.
Better Eclipse integration: more and more features are now available from the Eclipse IDE. Check them out here.
And finally the Subversion importer. Now you can easily migrate away from SourceSafe, CVS and Subversion... It really eases the process of testing Plastic...
If you want to check some of the new graphics we've set up a growing screenshot collection at Flickr
Remember Plastic is totally free for open source projects and educational purposes, so if this is your case you can request a free unlimited license writing to sales@codicesoftware.com
We've set up a VMWare Virtual Machine with the latest Plastic and a MySql Backend running on OpenSuse 10.3. Download it here.
Pablo Santos
I'm the CTO and Founder at Códice.
I've been leading Plastic SCM since 2005. My passion is helping teams work better through version control.
I had the opportunity to see teams from many different industries at work while I helped them improving their version control practices.
I really enjoy teaching (I've been a University professor for 6+ years) and sharing my experience in talks and articles.
And I love simple code.
You can reach me at
@psluaces.
Would you please comment on the GUI aspect of Plastic? I would be very interested in the reasons you choose to implement a different look and feel for WinForms (I suppose it was pretty heavy work) and eventualities you found in the road.
ReplyDeleteThanks