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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?

Michael Hackner
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splicer
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  • It probably depends on what you're looking for in the GUI. In what ways do you find the command-line interface deficient? Do you care about visual diffs, and perhaps three-way diffs? Do you want to visualize multiple branch timelines at once? – Ether Mar 11 '10 at 17:04
  • I suppose 2-way visual diffs, easily resolving merge conflicts, and quickly browsing the commit log would be the top features I'd be looking for. Overall feel (i.e. good HCI decisions) is also very important to me (so far, I'm finding Versions *slightly* more comfortable). One thing I really like about the GUI clients is that you don't need to escape your commit message strings. – splicer Mar 11 '10 at 17:25
  • Give then length of time you've been using SVN, you might be better off switching to git if you are able, which is largely seen as the successor to SVN. – cjm2671 Oct 12 '11 at 14:33
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    @cjm2671: I switched to git about a year ago and never looked back ;) – splicer Oct 13 '11 at 03:02
  • Stay away from Cornerstone for Mac. It has the worst merging known to versioning software. This software can sink projects for large companies. Stay away! – Ian S Apr 10 '14 at 18:40
  • Any latest updates on this comparison? – pnizzle Jul 07 '15 at 23:27
  • I have been using Cornerstone for a bit. It seems very good. Merging, whether cherry picking or full merging, it's seemed very good. So far I am giving it a 5/5. More updates to come. – pnizzle Jul 09 '15 at 03:49
  • I have been using Cornerstone for 3 weeks now. It has a few bugs during merging. Once you have used it long enough you'll know how to get around them. It also broke my iOS project by adding some versioning notes to one of my files. I contacted Cornerstone and got a reply days later stating that a conflict had taken place and explaining what a conflict is (gosh). My actual question as to why Cornerstone modified the file contents by adding versioning info was not answered. I chose not to reply to this since I fixed the issue myself. I will test Versions when my Cornerstone trial expires. – pnizzle Jul 28 '15 at 05:14
  • Another update for Cornerstone: did a merge to a branch today. Noticed some versioning text in one of the source file (post-merge). Now I have to go through everything to make sure nothing else has been messed up. Cornerstone is good so far but when the bugs show up they are not nice. – pnizzle Aug 25 '15 at 07:18
  • @IanSteffy Cornerstone is a front end to svn. Svn is actually performing the merging, Cornerstone just gives you convenient ways to find the things you want to merge, and lots of handy ways to merge. Yes you can definitely eff things up, but that's because of svn, not Cornerstone. – devios1 Feb 02 '17 at 14:58
  • I'll give you that Cornerstone 2's conflict resolution is not particularly smart, and it just falls back to what svn does, which is to modify the source by placing conflict markers that look like `<<<<<<< .mine`, etc. But you should realize that's svn doing that, not Cornerstone. – devios1 Feb 02 '17 at 15:00

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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.

Steven Masnfield
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  • Cornerstone is horrible. My entire company is having trouble with it. We've had merges overwrite weeks of code, but Cornerstone never gave us any conflicts. Don't be fooled and maybe you can avoid the mistake we made by using Cornerstone. – Ian S Apr 22 '14 at 20:31
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    It occurs to me that perhaps Ian did not execute the merge correctly. I've used perfectly capable SVN GUIs (like Tortoise) very successfully, and on other occasions, borked up a merge due to accidentally choosing the wrong set of parameters for my merge. This is (more likely than not) a failure of the user, rather than that of the software. – Crates Oct 23 '14 at 18:50
  • Cornerstone is good don't get me wrong, but this answer seems a bit promotional, seeing that Steven was last seen years ago, and all his posts and answers do not miss the "Cornerstone is awesome". – pnizzle Jul 28 '15 at 05:32
  • I just did a merge from folder A to B and now am seeing some versioning text in one of my .m files in folder A. Why folder A, and why am I seeing these things in the file in the first place. Cornerstone is good. But this is the second time I am having to fix this problem. – pnizzle Aug 25 '15 at 07:15
  • Remember, both of these are ultimately front-ends to svn. It's not Cornerstone's job to generate conflicts nor to actually perform the merge. That said I also think Cornerstone is an amazing tool and I'm not affiliated with them at all. I get where he's coming from. It's not perfect, but generally where it fails it is the fault of svn, not the GUI. – devios1 Feb 02 '17 at 14:50
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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.

globetro
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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.

Sno
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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 :-(

cjm2671
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Another consideration is SVN 1.7 support. Cornerstone has had this feature since mid February, 2012. No official date for when this will be supported in Versions.

--sigh-- I own Versions, but will be purchasing Cornerstone this week because I just can't wait any longer.

Dynaclips
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  • Versions’ 1.7 is now in beta and seems to work well. – Steven R. Loomis Feb 04 '13 at 17:47
  • Stay away from Cornerstone. It has some of the worst merging I've ever seen where it duplicates code and just generally causes problem. Cornerstone is the equivalent to that coworker in your office that destroys previous code every time he tries to commit or merge – Ian S Sep 17 '14 at 12:46
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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.

Lawrence Johnston
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I like Versions GUI more. Cornerstone has more features, but I don't NEED them, so they tend to get in the way.

Plus Kaleidoscope is an AWESOME text comparison tool and they work beautifully together.

I was hoping that XCode 4 would make both obsolete... maybe one day (sigh).

Alec Sloman
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Cornerstone won. We did a smack down and cornerstone 1.5 was far better both for our experienced team members and our production engineers ( more casual SVNers )

Symonty
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Cornerstone doesn't do svn merges. For me that's a deal killer (merging revisions from a a branch into the trunk? nope).

If all you need to do is commit and browse and checkout, Cornerstone is sexy and awesome, I like the UI better than Versions.

For daily usage -- branching, tagging, merging -- I like SmartSVN best and it's cross platform. UI isn't as sexy.

gabrielk
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We just bought 15 licenses of Cornerstone 2 after spending a few days evaluating it against the competing products included Versions. Save to say, Cornerstone 2 is in a different league to everything else. The entire application has been so well conceived it often boggles the mind. From browsing your working copy to awesome merge support, it just does not get any better. It's super fast and easy to use. Worth mentioning are the annotations as well, which make everything else the competition has done look dated and lame. Keep up the amazing work Zennaware.

Steven Masnfield
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I tried both cornerstone 2 and versions.

In the end I went with cornerstone 2 as it provided a more intuitive workflow. You can easily add a file, apple + enter to see the diff and then apple + t to commit. I found it easier to see the diff information in cornerstone and it felt more like an apple application if that makes sense.

soulston
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Cornerstone has such an excuse for diff that is painful to watch. Can't wait for trial to expire and move on, testing something else.

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Try SmartSvn, it has much more features and way more powerful then any of those. I also use svnx, however the UI is awful.

wattostudios
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ramzez
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I'm using versions because it suits my needs and I never even heard of cornerstone before i bought it.

If you cannot make up your mind that probably means that both work well enough for you, so go with the cheapes option, or the one with the best support. (i have no idea how the support on either is, never needed any)

Kris
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