[rswail]

Which is exactly how CVS (and its predecessors RCS and SCCS) worked.

They were file based revision control, not repository based.

SVN added folders like trunk/branches/tags that overlaid the file based versioning by basically creating copies of the files under each folder.

Which is why branch creation/merging was such a complicated process, because if any of the files didn't merge, you had a half merged branch source and a half merged branch destination that you had to roll back.

[fanf2]

CVS was called the “concurrent version system” because it did not lock files on checkout. Nor did svn. Perforce does.

[ack_complete]

Perforce does not lock files on checkout unless you have the file specifically configured to enforce exclusive locking in the file's metadata or depot typemap.

[rswail]

True dat, my mistake. That was its major feature, from memory though it still used the same reversed diff file format?

[umanwizard]

I am quite sure that you can edit files in an svn repo to your heart’s content regardless of whether anyone else is editing them on their machine at the same time.

[masklinn]

Yep, svn has a lock feature but it is opt-in per file (possibly filetype?)

A pretty good tradeoff, because you can set it on complex structured files (e.g. PSDs and the like) to avoid the ballache of getting a conflict in an unmergeable file but it does not block code edition.

And importantly anyone can steal locks by default. So a colleague forgetting to unlock and going on holidays does not require finding a repo admin.