The hype around the Linux kernel development moving away from their current versioning software Bitkeeper und thus looking for alternatives has washed me, too on the shores of monotone.

And while I've just recently (well, several months ago, now) switched from CVS to subversion I'm still far from entirely happy with the current situation and consequently open for suggestions.

And reading through monotone's FAQ the following snippet grabbed my attention:

Monotone takes the approach that divergence is a fundamental part of being a VCS. Divergence always happens. The proper role of a VCS, then, is not to try to prevent or hide divergence, but instead to make it visible and provide tools to manage it.

I haven't got the time to give monotone a thorough spin at the moment, but if I ever did, that would be the reason. One of my primary uses of subversion is to not only have revisions of my work (mainly bookkeeping and accounting, webdevelopment, client-documentation) but also to have that data in sync on my desktop machine and on my powerbook. Monotone seems to understand that problem and address it:

Here is an example: have you ever had a CVS working copy with an interesting change on your desktop, and wanted to move it to your laptop, or take it home for the evening to tinker with? Using CVS, the divergence is "hidden" from the CVS server until you commit, by which time it must be "resolved". Using monotone, you can commit whenever you like; you will just make a new head. You can check out that new head and continue to work on it (at home, on a laptop, wherever) until you're satisfied that it's OK, then merge with your colleagues.

Also, it doesn't use Berkely DB ;-)