[Gnu-arch-users] GNU Arch review - am I accurate?

[David A. Wheeler]

Hi - I've been trying to understand various SCM tools
(primarily CVS, Subversion, and Arch), and
ended up putting my thoughts down in an article:
 http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/scm.html
I list a number of problems/issues I have with tla's
current implementation, but I'm obviously not an arch
guru, so please send me corrections where I've made mistakes.

I really like arch.  My congrats to Tom Lord et al
for the many clever ideas here.  Yet, I'm also frustrated
by arch's current implementation (tla 1.2) due to various issues.
It appears to me that several small things obscure an
outstanding program.  In at least some cases, I
think people are working on my concerns
(Windows support, archd, etc.).. but not all.

There are some things I didn't see:
* Is anyone currently working on automated caching?
* Is it even slightly plausible to change the default
  filename/tagname conventions so arch will
  work more easily with common tools (e.g., vi/vim, more, csh,
  bash, Windows (it doesn't handle long names well))?
  Conventions are so arbitrary, yet the ones arch uses
  seem designed to cause unnecessary problems.
* Is there any reason that "mv" and "move" couldn't be the
  same thing (and let mv-id or an mv flag be the id mover)?
* Has anyone thought about the "signing of signing" issue
  (A signs A's code, B accepts it, C accepts B's, and we
  have a chain of signatures from all 3 showing the transition)?
  Centralized systems don't need this as much, but distributed
  systems need more if you're going to show where code came from.
* Is there an intent to fix the remaining problems in the
  native Windows port (e.g., symlinks, newline oddities)?

Also - has anyone tried to compare BitKeeper and Arch in detail?
For example, BitKeeper claims its 3-way merge is better than anyone's,
and Monotone claims its 3-way merge is better than Arch's, but
I'd love to see a more detailed comparison.  I did find some
specific information on BitKeeper, for example:
 http://www.kerneltraffic.org/kernel-traffic/kt20030323_210.txt

Thanks.

--- David A. Wheeler <address@hidden>