stregone at att.net wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> I'm the Chief Architect/CTO for a software company and as I mentioned in an 
> earlier post, we're starting several new projects.  Some of these projects are 
> using Smalltalk (the first time for us, though I've been using it at home for 
> years).  The reasons for switching to Smalltalk are various but mainly revolve 
> around faster implementation, existing projects/libraries that implement some 
> of the functionality we need, and the fact that I tired of our constantly 
> breaking procedural Java code.

Sounds nice! Welcome! :)
  
> The "problem" is this.  Up until now we've used CVS for code versioning, 
> sharing, and back-ups.  CVS works at the "project and class" levels.  Now, 
> I've looked around a bit at the options available, but unfortunately I won't 
> have time to try them all- so I'm hoping to benefit from the experts on this 
> list.
> 
> First off, do we have a best pratices page for team development on the wiki?  
> We it be of use to anyone if I documented this changeover that we're making as 
> a commercial software house?

Definitely. And I don't think there is such a page on the swiki.

> Secondly, it seems to me that perhaps Monticello is the closest thing to CVS 
> in the sense that it also operates on the package and class levels?  Whereas 

Monticello is indeed the way to go today. For anyone. :) Avi and the
others have made an excellent tool that keeps evolving. IMHO it has the
"no brainer"-auto-merge-update/commit-cycle that is the thing which
makes CVS nice.

But it lacks all the problems of CVS. :) Sure, there are things left to
do with Monticello but I think it can work nicely already in a team
setting.

> Magma, for example, operates more on the object level.  Or have I 
> misunderstood?  I know that this may be the time for a paradigm shift (and I'm 
> open to that), but the other developers have not been using Smalltalk and 
> they're in for several paradigm shifts as it is.

Magma is an OODB. Like GOODS. Both those solutions are for managing
large object models.
Monticello is for managing source code.

> Thanks for any suggestions.

I think there is no hard choice to make - the Squeak community is more
and more relying on Monticello, and it works very good.

regards, Göran