Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Arch Versus CVS Versus Subversoin

[John A Meinel]

Bruce Stephens wrote:
> Charles Duffy <address@hidden> writes:
>
>
> > Losing dumb server support seems a bit much to pay for such a
> > generally unimportant feature.
>
>
> Storing binary files more compactly seems pretty unimportant, I agree
> (well, it seems unimportant to me).
>
> Storing text files in such a way that they can be retrieved
> efficiently seems more valuable---so valuable that we're willing to
> store multiple revisions in plain text.
>
> I think it's at least possible that per-file things (such as "cvs
> annotate" and the like) are more commonly used than things like
> star-merge, and so a version control system implementation that
> optimised those (and made things like star-merge less efficient) might
> be a better fit for what people use version control systems for.
>
> You wouldn't need to lose dumb server support---there'd be nothing
> stopping an implementation also producing and reading Arch archives.
> Indeed, this xdelta storage of revisions could simply be a more
> compact revision library implementation---that would surely be
> uncontroversial.

Actually, on the arch-dev list we discussed quite a bit how the current 
archive format could easily support faster annotations. And I have to 
say, it depends on your usage.

I have never used annotate seriously (only, hey that's kind of neat), 
but I've run star-merge at least hundreds of times. For some people the 
opposite would be true.

It is possible to make both fast.

Trying to create a server that used xdelta internally would be a little 
bit painful, but you are completely right, it would be possible. Just 
not really worth creating a new wire protocol, and all the rest of the 
headaches.

John
=:->

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