Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Why we might use subversion instead of arch.

[Miles Bader]

On Fri, Feb 20, 2004 at 10:52:18AM -0800, Tom Lord wrote:
>     >   That was quite a shock. For projects with lots of small changes, it 
>     > probably is inconsequential, but for me, on a dialup, it would really 
>     > suck. 
> 
> I use a dial-up and I can't imagine a more dial-up friendly tool than
> arch.   When I need to merge changes from others, with their own
> archives, I typically create a local mirror from them.   In updating
> my local mirror, I read from them just about the minimum amount of
> data that is sufficient and thereafter operate entirely locally.  In
> combination with a local revision library, operations on these many
> archives are just about as fast as can be.

Yeah, I also use a dialup (last person in Japan to do so, I think :-), which
makes CVS pretty much unusable, but arch is a pleasure.

Note that unlike Tom I only use a local mirror for some archives; for my
`main' archive, I actually just directly access the remote archive, and in
most case this is just fine over a dialup.  More specifically, using a local
greedy revision-library (which operates automatically once you set it up), it
almost always operates `optimally' bandwidth-wise for transferring
changesets, with a small amount of additional latency-bounded overhead
because arch is using a dumb archive (not particularly objectionable).

[I think the main problem seems to be:

  (1) A bit of culture shock -- people are so stuck in `CVS mode', that
      arch's new take on things takes some time to wrap your head around
      (during which most people seem to post `how arch should be changed'
      messages to this mailing list :-)

      [Actually I think it's not really `new', it's the old patch-files +
      lots of trees approach that linux kernel hackers should be very
      familiar with, only with arch doing all the annoying grotty work and
      bookkeeping; since I think this approach is really rather _good_ except
      for all the grotty work and bookkeeping, I also think arch is the bee's
      knees.]

  (2) Arch needs a tiny bit of setup to really work well, revision libraries
      in particular, so a completely raw user may get a bad impression.
      [Note for someone setting up a server too, subversion almost certainly
      requires a lot _more_ work!]

  (3) Of course there are rough edges, though tla has come a long way
      recently...
]

-Miles
-- 
Yo mama's so fat when she gets on an elevator it HAS to go down.