Herding Code 96: Eric Sink on Veracity and DVCS

This week on Herding Code, the guys talk with Eric Sink, cofounder of SourceGear, about Veracity and Distributed Version Control Systems. Listen in and learn about Veracity’s architecture including pluggable layers and a unique approach to data storage all built on an impressive technical stack. And get an answer to the question that everyone’s asking “Why does the world need another DVCS?” All this and more, this week on Herding Code.

Kevin wastes no time kicking the show off with THE question – “Why Veracity? Why another DVCS?” Eric talks DVCS and the future of source control, how Git and Mercurial are just getting us started and how there’s no distributed system which is good at solving problems of the enterprise.
So, what does Veracity offer that Git, Mercurial and Bazaar do not? Eric describes record, field and constraint-based (opposed to folder and file-based) version control and how if it fits nicely inside of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM).
Eric compares the Veracity data storage model with NoSQL and Berkeley DB. This prompts Jon to ask about where SQLite comes into play.
Eric digs into the pluggable storage layer, “Zing” and component layers for Scrum or wikis, for example.
Jon asks about the nightly snapshots (releases) and Eric runs us through the intentionally not-so-easy build process.
The conversation shifts back to differences between Veracity and a Git or Mercurial. The guys talk about branching models and rebasing.
Scott K asks about free source control hosting and the guys comment about the community and social networking aspect of Bitbucket and GitHub.
Kevin asks if there was ever thought of building ALM tools on top of Mercurial or Git. Eric talks about DVCS functionality, licensing and what the enterprise wants.
Eric explains Veracity’s open source license, which components will and will not be open sources and speaks to community patches.
Jon asks if the Veracity data layer could be used to support other applications and not just version control.
Scott K asks about dogfooding Veracity – when did SourceGear start versioning Veracity in Veracity?
Eric explains his choice to write Veracity in C. The guys talk about cross platform development and Scott K asks about extensions and wrappers.
Jon beats Scott K to the punch and asks why Node.js isn’t included in Veracity’s impressive technical stack.
Kevin asks about plans to develop a Visual Studio plugin or a version control tools like TortoiseSVN.
Eric answers a Twitter question from Andrew Tobin about migration support. Kevin ask if there will be a feature like GitSVN for Veracity.
Kevin asks Eric to explain the need for exclusive file locks. Eric explains this need for industries like Gaming which deal with a large amount of binary files.
Jon and Eric talk more about the enterprise and what’s important to them.
Jon talks more about Veracity’s stack and the use of (wait for it) SVG for Veracity burn down charts.
Scott K asks why SourceGear went with SpiderMonkey over Script Monkey or V8.
Jon talks about portability and asks if Mono has a place in Veracity development.
Jon and Eric talk about Scrum and the enterprise’s current interest in Agile. This topic rolls into talk of browsers.
Kevin asks if SoureGear has concern that Microsoft may someday enter the DVCS space.
Scott K wraps the show asking how Eric defines success for Veracity.

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Show notes compiled by Ben Griswold. Thanks!

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Herding Code 96: Eric Sink on Veracity and DVCS

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