Re: CVS - setup reserved checkout

[Paul Sander]

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>[ On Friday, October 12, 2001 at 04:05:42 (GMT), Bryon Lape wrote: ]
>> Subject: Re: CVS - setup reserved checkout
>>
>> The benefits add up to zero.  Now, if it did method locking, that would be 
>> helpful,
>> protective AND productive.  Without some sort of locking, having developers 
>> waste
>> time with doing merging by hand is counterproductive.

>Obviously you've missed the point about how rare merging (automatic or
>by hand) is necessary in practice.....

>Perhaps you should ask the developers participating in any of the large
>freeware projects using CVS just how often they "waste" any time doing
>merging tasks.

I don't believe that merging is rare at all.  In fact, I encourage
merging often because many small merges are faster and easier than a
few large ones.

That's the key to the success of the concurrent development paradigm:
Keep everyone close together in their workspaces without foisting other
people's changes upon them in surprising ways.

If you let people's workspaces diverge too far, then you fall into the
same trap that is common with non-concurrent tools:  The merges get big
and cumbersome, to the point that the bulk of the effort goes into
resolving conflicts rather than completing automatic or trivial (copy)
merges.

In the end, productivity is probably the same in either method.  Developers
spend a lot of time getting coffee every day while their automatic merges
complete, or they slave away for hours resolving conflicts once every couple
of weeks.  But perception is everything here; letting the automation succeed
is easier than thinking about interactions of conflicting code.

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