Re: SCMS question

Hi,

Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> 1. The buildfarm is very heavily dependent on CVS, and any change to
> anything else will be quite painful. There is no guarantee that all the
> members even have SVN installed,

But you can guarantee they have CVS or even cvsup installed? That seems
dubious to me.

> let alone anything else. And someone
> would have to code and test significant client changes. That said, a lot
> of the tortuous logic could be removed - change detection would almost
> just resolve to comparing two tree numbers with SVN, for example.

..and a *real* VCS (as in monotone :-) ) would provide not only that,
but give you correctness guarantees, built in certification of revisions
(i.e. each buildfarm member could issue a cert on successful testing)
and lightweight branches, so you could much easier test experimental
patches of different authors. Just to name a few additional advantages.

> 2. Many people (and some buildfarm members) operate against mirrors of
> the main repo which are created with rsync or CVSup. I am not aware of
> any way to do the equivalent with SVN - any info would be gratefully
> received.

You might want to have a look at svk. It can do exactly that. And the
Blog of Thomas explains how, see [1].

> Of course, SVN is better at disconnected operation than CVS,

Really? I've dropped subversion exactly because it sucks big time when
disconnected. But again, I'm probably not comparing against CVS...

> I have no doubt we'll change someday to something better. I don't know
> what it is and I don't think we need to be in any hurry. This space is
> still very fluid.

Yup. Good to hear you see it that way. As I understand, you have good
reasons to be still using CVS, but are open to good suggestions. That's
a very good thing, but easily slips by when reading all the critics and
pro-CVS statements. ;-)

Regards

Markus

[1]: Remote Backup Of A Subversion Repository
http://moelhave.dk/2006/07/remote-mirroring-a-subversion-svn-repository/