[Axiom-developer] Re: [M#73697383] Re: Disk-quota Request

[Ben Collins-Sussman]

On 9/30/06, Bill Page <address@hidden> wrote:

> So this confirms that 'svk smerge' does not re-create the repository
> in the same compact form in which it exists on SourceForge. :-(

Another experiment you can try:  subversion 1.4 now ships with a
mirroring tool called 'svnsync'.  Try using 'svnsync push' to
replicate one repository to another, and see the results.

I somehow got cc:'d on these conversations, and I feel like a bit of
an interloper... but it's hard not to overhear the debate.  Here are
my two cents.

* Nearly every opensource project has dependencies on other projects.
That's normal.  it is *not* the norm to grab the dependencies and
stuff privately patched versions into your source repository.  The
norm is have a build system which carefully checks for the correct
versions of the dependencies, and then put the burden of making the
build 'just work' on those people who actually are in charge of
creating distributions.  Typically there are individuals charged with
making sure that each OS distribution (redhat, debian, ubuntu,
freebsd, fink, windows, etc) has a healthy package available with
dependencies described correctly, and/or that the apt/yum/whatever
system is using the correct versions of the dependencies.  What you
guys are doing just doesn't scale;  you need to play nicely with the
rest of the world, rather than try to put yourself in a bubble.  If
every project did what you guys are doing, a user might end up with 15
different private versions of GCL on their system, instead of 2
versions managed by the OS and shared by 15 products.

(Yes, subversion's tarball includes apr and neon, but that's just
*one* particular package we distribute.  If you install subversion via
a system like apt, things just magically work.  And if you check out
svn's source tree from version control, you don't get anything but
subversion's source code.)

* Saying 'svn isn't ready for primetime' is mildly amusing to me.  I'm
one of subversion's original designers, and the system has been
evolving for 6 years now.  Apache, GCC, KDE, Gnome, Samba, and nearly
every project started within the last 3 years uses it.  Sourceforge
and Google offer it to the public.  There are 6+ books written on it.
It's the 'new standard'.   If it were as unusable as your personal
experiences, it never would have taken off.

I'm sure, though, that the negative experiences reported about svn
aren't amusing to those experiencing them.  But I assure you that
they're indicative of something configured incorrectly in specific
environments.  Those experiences aren't the norm, they're some weird
edge-case.  In other words, occam's razor says, "it's not that the
public is crazy for widely adopting a buggy system, rather, there's
just something buggy about your particular setups".  :-)  My
recommendation is that you guys report your problems to the
address@hidden list (which has thousands of subscribers)
to help de-bug whatever gremlins are in your setup.  Quietly hating
subversion isn't a useful strategy.