Re: Converting ClearCase to CVS

[Paul Sander]

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>[ On Tuesday, February 19, 2002 at 18:04:06 (-0500), Eric Siegerman wrote: ]
>> Subject: Re: Converting ClearCase to CVS
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 19, 2002 at 05:04:54PM -0500, Greg A. Woods wrote:
>> > Without knowing details of either sitution I think you have vastly
>> > mis-interpreted the meaning of the word "simple".  Something that seemed
>> > "simple" to you obviously turned out to be exceedingly complex for CVS.
>> 
>> The latter does NOT imply the former.  Reserved checkouts, for
>> example, are simple enough in theory.  That they're not simple in
>> a CVS context -- and, some argue, inconsistent with CVS -- does
>> not make the former a "misinterpretation".

>That's not what I meant.  Paul, someone with lots of experience with SCM
>practices apparently thought what he wanted to do was "simple", but it
>turned out to cost him several hours per day doing "support" to make it
>work with CVS.  Meanwhile stuff he considers to be less simple turns out
>to be much easier and less costly (esp. in terms of ongoing support) to
>do with CVS.  Obviously he's mis-interpreted what "simple" means
>w.r.t. CVS in this case.

We were using CVS in the way that it was designed, but the robustness
of the implementation gave us more grief than I care to remember.  My
argument has become somewhat weaker now because CVS' quality of
implementation has improved substantially over the years.  But despite
those improvements, it still has a long way to go before it would
become something that I would recommend for large development efforts
where many people are constantly pounding on it.

Remember, my point is that there are hidden costs to support CVS in
a commercial environment that have roughly the same impact on the
company's bottom line as licensing a commercial product.  Rather than
handing the money to a salesman, you're handing it to someone who must
a lot of time maintaining CVS.

>> > You either chose the wrong tool for your requirements, or you chose to
>> > use it in a way that it was not designed to be used.
>> 
>> Geez, that's just what Paul's been saying all along!  It's
>> everyone else that's been treating his defence of ClearCase as
>> rank heresy.

>Yeah, so why does he hang around here and why did he keep using CVS for
>so long depsite the fact that he had nothing but grief from it?

I'm still using CVS.  It runs on the machines I have at home and works
great for my toy projects.  It's well suited to that application and
the stakes are pretty low if something gets messed up.  It's the ideal
application for which I would recommend anyone use the tool.

But it can be improved.  Most people here know where my big buttons
are, so I won't go into them.

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