Cornerstone vs Versions for Mac OS X

Question

I've been using svn on the command line for 5+ years, but I'm thinking of switching to GUI. The two kings of Mac subversion apps seem to be Versions and Cornerstone. Most of the reviews/comments I've seen comparing the two are from way back in 2008, when Cornerstone was first released. It's now 2010, and both apps have undergone significant changes.

I've been running trial copies of both apps for the past week, and I still can't make up my mind. Which would you recommend and why?

Solution 1

Cornerstone has been out a few years and version 2 was just released. It is now by far the best value, fastest and feature rich Subversion client for the Mac. The merge features and annotations alone are awesome. I have never seen such a cool take on either of them and the way you can just click a block of text when comparing and have the log message displayed for that block together with all the statistical information you'll ever need in a stunning UI, it's just awesome.

Seriously I can't recommend this tool enough. It is in a different league to Versions.

Solution 2

I've tried both and like Cornerstone better, mainly because it has a far superior file-diff interface.

With Cornerstone, you can double-click on any file in your commit-list and it instantly brings up a diff of your version vs the repository version. This makes it very easy to quickly code-review your changes before checking in.

With Versions, as far as I can tell, you have to hit Ctrl-D, then hit Compare, and then wait a good few seconds before it loads up the diff tool.

Solution 3

After reading this and looking at CornerStone 2.0 and Versions, Corner Stone won on just the simplicity of their file compare.

With versions I have to download or install XCode (or something else). Cornerstone had it built in, and for my tastes the Cornerstones file compare is the best I've seen for a casual user. It's just immediately clear what was added and deleted.

I haven't tried the branch and merge but it seems Cornerstone has made that a big push.

Solution 4

I'd like to add Cornerstone 2 now has branch & merge, which is a real 1-up on Versions. Irritatingly I bought Versions just before that release so I feel a little stung :-(

Solution 5

I purchased Cornerstone several years ago, primarily because I had heard good things about their support. I have contacted support several times, once or twice with bugs and several times to ask questions. They were always very responsive, and I've been happy with my choice.

Cornerstone also has a good educational discount if you're a student.

I do wish that when viewing the history of a folder you could view the changes to individual files within that folder the way you can in Tortoise on Windows.

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