Why is that bad? At my work we are using svn and I have like 8 branches (not all of them are currently active I confess.) I put my branches not into /branches, but into /users/fbirbacher. This way noone has to care about them.
Because once you pushed it's public and you cannot rewrite public history. Means you cannot fix all the "oops" commits before merging with production.
With git/hg, when you do a mistake, you simply cancel your local
merge and redo it again until you did the right thing, then you push.
This suggests 1st mistakes you do in svn cannot be repaired, and 2nd you will spot every mistake in git/hg before you push. As I understand, once you push to a public repo and then discover a mistake your mistakes will be just as visible as with svn. I agree there is a chance to find some errors before publishing, but with svn I spot errors in commands I run on my working copy easily before committing.
You're right. I forgot that merges were local with svn and that the result wasn't commited yet. I was a bit heated about the discussion and went emotional, which is a bad thing to do. Anyway, what I really was after is the inability to fix "oops" commits before they go public. To be honest I think all the pros/cons that had to be made have been made now, and eventually it's the people who really work on boost that should decide because they're the firsts affected. Philippe