Re: subversion vs cvs (Was: Re: linked list rewrite)

On Mar 24, 2004, at 18:22, Magnus Naeslund(t) wrote:

> The new buzz is distributed versioning systems these days, but i
> question if that is called for in the vast majority of projects out
> there.

You can use distributed revision control systems as centralized
systems, but not vice-versa.

> But ofcourse arch has alot of features that are extremly cool, the
> reason why i didn't evaluate it further was that it didn't work on
> windows well, the fixed weird branching/version naming and the
> complexity of learning for our developers since they already use cvs.

Depends on how you set it up. In the recommended ``tagline'' method,
you don't have to tell the revision control system when you add,
remove, or move files (for the most part, binary files are not suitable
for tagline). All you have to do is commit and type a message.

> Subversions strength is it's percieved simplicity, and archs strength
> is it's complexity.

It is subversion's complexity that drove me away from it, in fact.

Arch is incredibly simple all the way through. It sounds like it must
be complex to be able to do all of the things people do with it, but
it's most assuredly not. The requirements are few and basic (diff,
patch, and tar). The most common stuff is at least as simple as CVS
(commit, update and in explicit mode, add, rm, and mv), and the
advanced stuff is just as easy as the simple stuff (star-merge, tag
(branching), etc...).

As far as understanding the simplicity of arch (if you wanted to
understand the problems it solves and implement it yourself), a really
good presentation was posted today to the arch list that sums it up
quickly and concisely. It's hard to go through that and not think, ``I
could write this.''

http://web.verbum.org/tla/grokking-arch/grokking-arch.html

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