There could soon be another player on the version control field dominated by CVS. The goal of the Subversion project is to build a version control system that is a compelling replacement for CVS.
Areas that the Subversion team plans to improve upon from CVS include: versioning of directories, renames and file meta-data; atomic commits (revision numbers will be per commit instead of per file); I18N support for commands, user messages and errors; graceful handling of repeated merges; support for different client-side diff programs; and more efficient repository layout and transparent handling of binary files. Subversion will also be written from the beginning to be used in a client/server environment using WebDAV.
The project is currently in a pre-alpha state but has passed its proof of concept milestone. The authors hope to have an alpha release available by May 2001. The Subversion web site is at http://subversion.tigris.org/.