We are about to start a simple webservice project with some JSP/servlet code as part of a course. We are a team of 4 and 3 of us have not used Version Control Software, ever. I plan to host the project on google code so that we can work on our time and still have access to code, version control etc. I need to choose between SVN and Mecurial/GIT. Given that the code it fairly small, is there any specific advantage of choosing DVCS instead of SVN? I feel learning SVN is easier compared to Git/Mercurial.
PS: GUI clients will make life easier. Are there any good ones for Git?
PPS: I am leaning slightly towards DVCS because I want to learn it and hey! school years are the best time to learn!
The two biggest choices are between git and Subversion. Git is a distributed version control system while Subversion is centralized. As I tell many people, they're different, not one is better and one is worse. Each has their own advantages depending upon the circumstances.
Subversion is much, much easier to use and has much better documentation. Git complexity comes from it being a distributed system, so you have the local repository and the remote repository which means there are now two repositories you're sending updates to. This can become quite confusing for many people -- especially people new to version control systems.
I suggest you download Subversion, and read the Subversion on line manual and play around with it. This is not to say to use Subversion. It's just to get you to understand how to use a version control system.
Now, to satisfy the Git fans out there: Git has one big advantage over Subversion: It's distributed. In Subversion you must have a centralized repository. That means setting up an Apache server, or at least running the svnserve Subversion server process on some machine that's accessible to everyone. You have one of those lying around? Most small teams don't.
Where Git shines in situations like yours is that you don't need a centralized server running Git. Everyone has a copy of the entire repository, and you can pass around the updates directly between the members of your team without checking your changes into a centralized server. You can send Git patches to each other via email. Or, you can even use a centralized Git repository in Dropbox and push and pull local copies from there. (Don't ever use that repository directly!). The main problem is making sure everyone on your team is getting the same updates as everyone else. This is where Git can breakdown if you're not careful.
Now, if you do happen to have a centralized server, and rather use Subversion, it's pretty simple setting up a Subversion repository server. Subversion comes with svnserve which is a very lightweight server and it can be setup as a Windows service. If you prefer Apache httpd as a server, you can get freely available Subversion server packages from many different sources. Here are a few:
1 These packages are the complete Apache httpd and Subversion package all combined into a single easy install. If you forgo the GUI front end, you can setup LDAP/Active Directory or SSL yourself. You can't use the front end to do this without paying for the pro version. However, I'm not sure exactly what their license agreement says about that.