Mailing List Archive: SCMs (was Re: multiple incarnations of daemons)

On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, James R. Leu wrote:

> I used it heavily at my previous employer. I really like it's
> branching and merging capabilities, plus it is fast. I got an
> 'open source' licence, so I can use it.
>
> At my current employer we use Arch (tla) and I've gotten used to
> the way it works. It still feels a bit clumsy compared to p4, but
> it is getting better. Despite Arch being a little clumsy, I think
> it is the best open source revision control package availble (no
> offence to the SVN people out there).

Actually, that's a discussion I'd like to have. What are people's
opinions on SCMs today? What would people reccomend, prefer, accept?

I'd like something that facilitates distributed, decentralised
development. I'd like atomic commits, branching that isnt a nightmare
to work with and with half-decent access control/logging. Ie i'd like
to be able open the Quagga SCM to anyone who wants, without having to
fear.

The way I see it:

SVN:

pros:
- atomic commits
- very good branching support
- easy transition for CVS users

cons:
- constantly moving target
- lots and lots and lots of dependencies (many of which bleeding edge
see first con)
- nearly /everything/ of importance is kept in DB files
- must run from inside apache (standalone svnserve lacks decent auth
facilities and has no ACL facilities)

Arch:
pros:
- atomic commits
- excellent branching
- decentralised/distributed model
- small, fast, light. (680k tla binary does everything)
- good merging tools
- 'friendly' file formats (tar.gz's and diff's)

cons:
- completely different to CVS from user POV
- very inflexible naming schemes (for branches, versions)

BitKeeper:
pros:
- distributed
- excellent branching
- good merging tools

cons:
- lots of people object to the licence.

Does anyone have any opinions on the matter, or do we just stick to
CVS until SVN stabilise?

regards,
--
Paul Jakma paul@clubi.ie paul@jakma.org Key ID: 64A2FF6A
warning: do not ever send email to spam@dishone.st
Fortune:
Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?
-- Steven Wright

On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 20:30:58 +0100 (IST)
Paul Jakma <paul@clubi.ie> wrote:

> > At my current employer we use Arch (tla) and I've gotten used to
> > the way it works. It still feels a bit clumsy compared to p4, but
> > it is getting better. Despite Arch being a little clumsy, I think
> > it is the best open source revision control package availble (no
> > offence to the SVN people out there).
>
> Actually, that's a discussion I'd like to have. What are people's
> opinions on SCMs today? What would people reccomend, prefer, accept?
>
> I'd like something that facilitates distributed, decentralised
> development. I'd like atomic commits, branching that isnt a nightmare
> to work with and with half-decent access control/logging. Ie i'd like
> to be able open the Quagga SCM to anyone who wants, without having to
> fear.
>
> The way I see it:
>
> SVN:
> [...]
> Arch:
> [...]
> BitKeeper:
> [...]
>
> Does anyone have any opinions on the matter, or do we just stick to
> CVS until SVN stabilise?

OK, so you asked for opinions, here's mine :-)

I do not work personally with any of the above, so I cannot contribute from a
users' point of view. I would like to make a general statement though.

I see SVN and Arch on one side, and bitkeeper on the other. First bitkeeper.
It surely is a good and useable piece of software, linux kernel people wouldn't
be able to use it otherwise, so it is pretty sure it does really work well.
Nevertheless it is proprietary software, and I have not seen any argument why
an open software project should make itself dependent on proprietary stuff
without any need. Sure the maintainer can decide, but such a decision is
questionable and will be questioned very heavily fore sure. Quagga/Zebra has -
in my eyes - already suffered from a maintainer being close to proprietary
ideas and issues. We should not make the same type of mistake in different
sourroundings.
My personal point of view is clearly against using bk.

SVN and arch.
From all I have heard arch is preferred by most people and seems to have taken
substantial steps forward. Most classify it as superior to SVN today. I would
try something very simple: if you have cons on both pieces that would prevent
their respective usage ask the maintainers if they can be fixed and use the one
that fixes them first. This sounds rough, but it is a good way to find out
easily which project is moving faster and more alive.

Regards,
Stephan