David Abrahams <dave@boost-consulting.com> wrote:
I am just posting this here to alert those who look at subject lines to what we're discussing. To review the whole discussion, see http://news.gmane.org/find-root.php?message_id=%3cuk6pujjyu.fsf%40boost%2dco...
One thread you might find interesting http://news.gmane.org/find-root.php?group=gmane.comp.version-control.subversion.devel&article=53583 It talks about the troubles Mono had in going from CVS to Subversion. YMMV. My personal opinion is that, if you want a centralized version control system, you aren't going to do significantly better than Subversion. There are a fair number of large projects using it, and, especially with the new fsfs backend, it seems to work pretty well for most people. However, I am not a big fan of centralized version control, and vastly prefer a distributed approach. Distributed systems let people use version control when they are not connected to a central server, so when the server goes down you can still get work down. So the problem that spawned this thread about a CVS lock is much less of an issue. In fact, if the central server goes down unexpectedly, it is relatively easy to set up a new server somewhere else. Also, it is much easier for people to make private branches and contribute changes. No one needs accounts just to get work done. This blog entry summarizes it rather well http://web.verbum.org/blog/freesoftware/distributed-future In any case, there are a few different free decentralized version control systems. Darcs www.darcs.net Very easy to use. Fairly mature with good windows support, but it has some performance problems. It will probably have problems with a project the size of Boost. tla wiki.gnuarch.org Mature, but overly complex and has some annoying limitations. The windows client is definitely a second-class citizen. Should be fast enough for Boost. Monotone www.venge.net/monotone Beta. Windows support is relatively good. Well engineered, but unsure about speed with Boost. svk svk.elixus.org Beta. Adds distributed capabilities to subversion. It is the Rodney Dangerfield of version control systems: it doesn't get any respect. However, I don't see any obvious problems with it. ArX www.nongnu.org/arx/ Beta. This is my personal project. Windows requires cygwin. I personally use it to version control Boost, and it works well for me. In fact, it is probably the fastest of all of these for most common local operations. There are other differences, but I will spare you the details. Realistically, no change will work unless a major contributor to Boost gets religion and invests some time in learning one of them. All of these systems, including Subversion, have their annoying differences from CVS. It sounds like Subversion has such a convert with David Abrahams. Cheers, Walter Landry wlandry@ucsd.edu