I never got a very deep answer as to why Lispers seem to prefer Arch. I had figured that there was something about Arch that makes it really good for Lisp code. Not so, it seems.

The best thing I heard was from Christian Neukirchen who wrote and said it was "...because Lispers like to do it the Right Way." Somehow, that sort of makes sense. Lispers certainly don't follow the crowd. They look for good solutions to problems and they aren't afraid to stick with something that isn't winning the technology popularity contest. So, while the rest of the masses struggle on with CVS, it seems like a lot of Lispers are turning to Arch for its superior approach to change sets, branching and merging, etc.

I exchanged a few emails with Christian and as a result of his urging, I have started using Arch myself. It's too early to tell you my experiences, but if CVS has you down and you want to look for something that may be a little less popular and a little bit better, try Arch. I'll write another blog entry summarizing my experiences once I have enough of them.