Re: Proposal: Subversion Migration

[Gregory John Casamento]

MJ,

--- MJ Ray <mjr@phonecoop.coop> wrote:

> Jeremy Tregunna <jtregunna@blurgle.ca> wrote:
> [private message posted to a mailing list]
> 
> First you send me a message off-list without a cc to the list,
> (but also send a copy to list, unknown to me at that time) then
> you post my reply to the off-list one here. Dirty sneaky troll.

Ummm.  This probably just means that he forgot to hit reply-all, a common
mistake which I'm sure we've all made.   No need to be snippy. ;)

> The drawbacks of SVN remain:
> * non-distributed (same as CVS)
> * incompatible with the git-using tools (same as CVS)
> * poor library licence limits integration
> * client at least fivefold more disk, probably bigger in memory too
> * not supported at savannah
> * reconfigure everything now, only to move again soon

Advantages include: (i.e. features CVS lacks)
* Actively developed, CVS hasn't seen many releases lately
* Versions directories, file meta data, etc.
* Handles file renames without the need to remove and re-add a file to the
repo.
* Atomic commits.  In CVS, if an error occurs during commit, it's likely that
some changes made it and others didn't.  A bad situation.
* Efficient handling of binary files.
* Parseable output makes scripting easier.

For a full list of features (not necessarily advantages) of SVN, go to
http://subversion.tigris.org/.

The only thing I saw when reviewing the feature set that I do not like is the
fact that branching and tagging are both handled by doing a "copy in the
repository" and that it is possible for someone to sync to a tag and modify the
contents of the tag in the same way they would if using a branch in CVS.

On the surface this sounds bad, but you can almost as easily check out a set of
files in CVS and move a tag to a new version of a file, thus modifying the tag.
 SVN just makes this particular sin a little easier to commit (pardon the pun).

> ..and that's all obvious before use. Once in use, other quirks
> and limitations become obvious. Can't we do better?

I have yet to review arch, so I can't say if it would be a better choice.

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Later, GJC

Gregory John Casamento 
-- CEO/President Open Logic Corp. (A MD Corp.)
## Maintainer of Gorm (IB Equiv.) for GNUstep.