[Gnu-arch-users] [arch advocacy] Games from Within: litmus test for revision control

[Magnus Therning]

This might be well-known, but I haven't come across it (or thought about
it) before, so maybe my pointing it out is helpful for someone.

I ran across this blog entry on Subversion recently:

 http://www.gamesfromwithin.com/articles/0407/000026.html

It's a short comparison of Subversion and Perforce. The shortcomings of
branching in subversion is high-lighted: 

 "Here's the real killer blow for me: Subversion doesn't keep track of
 what merges have been applied to a file. That's up to you to keep track
 of somehow. That means that for every file (or set of files), you have
 to know up to what revision they've been integrated, and only pull in
 the changes from that revision on."

Also a "litmus test" for source control is presented:

 "I also decided to try one of my current litmus tests for good handling
 of branching and merging: start with a file A in the main trunk, create
 a branch from it, modify the file both in the branch and in the main
 trunk in a way that no conflicts occur, then rename it to A_1 in the
 branch and attempt to merge back into main. Maybe I'm dreaming, but I'd
 like a good version control program to realize that file A has been
 modified and renamed, and apply both those changes to file A in main.
 Subversion falls short yet again by ignoring all changes done to file A
 in main and simply bringing over the changes from A_1. I didn't even
 get a warning of any kind. Not exactly refactoring friendly. But then
 again, Perforce fails this test as well, but at least it prints a
 warning to let you deal with the merge before giving up."

Of course Arch doesn't suffer from the shortcoming, and it passes the
"litmus test" with flying colours.

-- 
Magnus Therning                    (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4)
address@hidden
http://magnus.therning.org/

Software is not manufactured, it is something you write and publish.
Keep Europe free from software patents, we do not want censorship
by patent law on written works.

Unreadable code,
Why would anyone use it?
Learn a better way.
     -- Geoff Kuenning's contribution to the 2004 Perl Haiku Contest,
        Haikus about Perl - 'Dishonerable Mention' winner