Re: Proposal: Subversion Migration

[MJ Ray]

Andrew Ruder <aeruder@ksu.edu> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 12, 2005 at 01:32:57AM +0200, Helge Hess wrote: [...]
> > b) Svn is not a viable option for GNU projects due to licensing
> > issues (is this really true?)
> 
> There is obviously no issue or gcc wouldn't be moving to it next week.

That was not the claim. SVN is under a GPL-incompatible licence.
In practical terms, this makes any GPL application linking with
it undistributable, IIRC. So, forget having a slick GPL'd GNUstep
app to manage your archive.

[...]
> I can't agree with you more here.  With the exception of finding a
> server, moving from CVS => Subversion brings many benefits for not a lot
> of effort.  The learning curve is non-existant.  Assuming we find a
> place that everyone agrees with for hosting, I can only ask one
> question:
> 
> Why not?

It's more software for people to use, and apparently big software
at that. According to http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/INSTALL
the prerequisites for compiling include the Apache Web Server.
Selecting the client package on a debian testing machine invites
nearly 5Mb to install, compared with just over 1Mb for CVS.

That's quite an overhead for something which seems very likely
not to be the long-term winner, because it doesn't solve the
client-server problem at all.

If the trees head off into the subversion mists, can there
be patches and daily-snapshots for the rest of the world, please?

What's the tearing hurry to rush down a dead end? At the
speed at which git-based tools seem to be converging - arch
was heading git-wards before the latest twist in the road,
darcs has --enable-git, monotone is doing something with git
that I don't yet understand, nor do I fathom Mercurial - it
might be all over bar the porting in a few months.

Oh well, at least no-one suggested BitKeeper. ;-)