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Re: Seeking initial reactions: Moving setup from CVS to Subversion?
On Thu, 19 Aug 2004, Max Bowsher wrote:
> Robert Collins wrote:
> > On Thu, 2004-08-19 at 00:42 +0100, Max Bowsher wrote:
> [about the possibility of converting setup to subversion]
> >
> > I'm also not keen on this for several reasons:
> > * subversion doesn't address the issues with merging & distribution that
> > made it difficult for folk with long-running patches to stay in sync
>
> Not directly, no. But branching and merging are somewhat nicer than in cvs,
> so we would be able to give folk with long-running patches personal
> branches. This addresses the "issues of merging". I don't understand what
> you mean by "issues of distribution".
>
> > * subversion appears to be a very fragile system (I'm working with quite
> > a few projects that involve subversion, and breakage is common).
>
> Being rather enthused by subversion, I'd be happy to discuss this common
> breakage further either privately or on users@subversion.tigris.org, to try
> to diagnose the cause and dispel this appearance.
>
> > * plus of course, that the rest of the project has shown no interest (at
> > this point) in moving.
>
> Do you mean the rest of the cygwin project?
>
> It doesn't have such an immediate need for major moving and renaming of
> source files, which is the principal immediate gain, IMO.
>
> Also, to be honest, I don't think subversion is capable of adequately
> replicating the complex setup of symlinks and modules that is the src
> repository (at it's present state of development, anyway).
>
> Or do you mean the rest of the cygwin setup project?
>
> That would be me, you, Igor, Gary and Pierre? Anyone I've missed? Let's
> give them time to tell us their opinions.
>
> Max.
Well, since my name's been mentioned... Actually, you did miss a whole
category of people -- the anonymous CVS users... But read on.
Personally, I don't mind having to install another VCS to work on setup,
especially since the usage transition seems relatively painless, and if
only for the ability to do disconnected 'add's and 'diff's... It would
also give me an opportunity to play with subversion, learn it, and maybe
consider it for my local version control on other projects.
One thing, however, that did come up, and that I deem important, is that I
sometimes use the web interface to CVS (the CVSWeb that CGF mentioned) to
either track changes or retrieve an older version of some file. That and
the commit messages to cygwin-apps-cvs are pretty much essential for me,
so unless they could be done with subversion as well (and as nicely), I'd
have to speak out against the switch.
A wild idea: if there were some way to present a CVS view on a subversion
repository (i.e., have an adapter client that behaves exactly like cvs),
and to hook up that view to CVSWeb and anonymous read-only repositories
(so that people wouldn't have to use svn unless they mean to make changes
to setup), that would, IMO, satisfy pretty much everyone (including me).
Igor
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