Re: Proposal: Subversion Migration

[Andrew Ruder]

On Tue, Oct 11, 2005 at 08:25:33AM +0000, MJ Ray wrote:
> 1. Subversion shares CVS's client-server design flaw, hindering
>    disconnected, distributed and fault-tolerant operation;

This is true.  svk can be used to add a disconnected operation to
subversion though, and developers would be more than welcome to use that
if they so chose.  I think that being liberal with the use of per-user
branch directories would achieve one of the large benefits of distributed
SCM systems: encouraging lots of small changes that can be merged all at
once into the trunk when the changes are complete.

> 2. git-based tools seem to be winning the version control war;

This is true, and I would -love- to see GNUstep using git ( + whatever
SCM you chose to use on top of it ); however, I think that subversion is
a decent solution requiring a small learning curve but still magnitudes
better than CVS.  

Plus I am still advocating that the GNUstep repos would be *the* focal
point for gnustep hacking, development, etc.  I'd love to look through
/branches/* and see other people's modifications to GNUstep that have
not yet been finished completely or have not been merged into mainline.
Stuff like the new NSTabView code, etc. would have been ideally all done
in various /branches subdirectories and progress could could be viewed
and aided by all.

> 3. Subversion is under a GPL-incompatible licence.

True once more, but then again, gcc development should be up and running
next week with subversion.

> I appreciate anyone wanting to move away from CVS, but SVN seems
> to be trading one set of problems for another.

Yes.  I am advocating not-CVS here.  Subversion is a more than
reasonable choice that maintains a CVS-like operation while fixing many
of the inherent flaws in CVS.  I'm not sure how you can call it trading
one set of problems for another when just about anything would be a good
deal more useful than CVS. :)

Just the quote "I appreciate anyone wanting to move away from CVS" seems
to suggest that you are at least favoring anything that would foster
rapid development better than CVS. :)

Cheers,
Andy

-- 
Andrew Ruder
http://www.aeruder.net