Why SourceJammer?

A lot of free-software user's guides, I've found, begin with a lengthy justification or statement of philosophy. So I figure why not?

 

A question I am sometimes asked is "why SourceJammer?" Does the world really need another source control system? Why not stick with Visual Source Safe or CVS?

 

I'm not going to knock these products, both of which have some excellent features. But VSS costs $$$. And CVS can be cumbersome to install, maintain and administer. I believe there is a niche for SourceJammer—a place for a free, simple, easy to understand and configure source control system for small to medium-sized folders. That's the market I have tried to aim for and I believe that SourceJammer makes for an excellent solution at this level.

 

Specifically, I think SourceJammer is an excellent source control system for any small development organization, whether as part of a large company, an open-source project, a small startup, or a university or other school coding project. SourceJammer is also ideal for 1-man projects because it is so easy to install and maintain.

 

SourceJammer's benefits:

  • It's free.
  • Open-source approach means you can customize it to fit your needs.
  • Use of other open-source tools and open standards means you are not dependent on one approach.
  • Runs under Jakarta Tomcat (or any other servlet container for that matter).
  • I'll say it again—it's easy to install and maintain.
  • Uses SOAP for client/server communication. This approach gives you a lot of control over how and where your SourceJammer archives can be accessed.
  • Robust GUI runs under any OS that supports Java. I've run it under Win 98, Win 2000, Win XP, and various flavors of Linux (of course). I have not tested it under Mac OS, but there is no reason why it won't run there as well.
  • It's still growing. I'm working on SourceJammer all the time. Lots of improvements are planned for the near future. This is not a dead product.
  • GUI can easily be translated into any language.
  • Nifty visual diff tool is built right in.
  •  

    In the interest of being honest, I have to admit certain limitations in the current version of SourceJammer (1.2).

       

    Known limitations of SourceJammer:

  • No concurrent versioning.
  • No folder or file-level security settings. All security settings are server-wide or at the archive level.
  • No indexing or searching.
  •    

    We have plans to overcome all of these limitations in the not-too-distant future, so stay tuned for future releases.