Re: [Texmacs-dev] Monitoring changes in mainline

[Joris van der Hoeven]

> What is the rationale not to have the source in CVS at savannah.gnu.org?

There are several problems with CVS:

1) The system is bad from a technical point of view.
   For instance, it is a nightmare to move files and
   directories around; precisely the kind of thing
   which I do during a reorganization phase...

2) The control I have over the order and the way changes
   are made in the main branch are less fine-grained as
   is the case which patches. This may also be due to
   the fact that I do not know well how to use CVS.
   But the mere fact that I could not quickly learn
   how to do so means that the tool is not that good.

3) In another project where we do use CVS (as an experience
   for me), I don't like it at all. I have the impression
   that people very easily make changes without doing
   all necessary checks themselves. As a consequence
   I spend *most* of the time what is wrong and undoing
   changes made by others. In other words, contributed
   patches usually are of a better quality than
   contributions made via CVS.

> If only Joris has commit access and he makes a CVS tag each
> time he does a release I think there would not be much
> difference in his current procedures and there would be benefits
> both to him and to others without much cost.
>
> CVS is not perfect, but in my experience it is far better than
> the model where the maintainer accepts patches sent in from
> others and does periodic releases. Even if only one person has
> commit access, CVS is better.
>
> Even for the non-maintainer who has only anonymous access
> it is SO convenient to be able to 'cvs diff -u' and get a
> patch, or 'cvs update' and get a merge with the current CVS.

Well, if I am the only one with write-access, then this does
solve problems 2 and 3, but not problem 1. So, at least,
I will wait for the end of all critical reorganizations
before switching to CVS.