Switching from CVS to Subversion: test svn repo available

[David Hampton]

On Mon, 2005-10-24 at 13:42 -0400, Chris Shoemaker wrote:

> If you'd like some more detailed info, I'd recommend:
> [5] for the heart of the issue in concise terms
> [6] for an good overview of the main SCM debate
> [8] for an overview of SCM softwares available
> [1, 2, 7] for some informative Arch vs. SVN debate
> [3] for a practical perspective on SCM usage
> 
> [1] http://www.reverberate.org/computers/ArchAndSVN.html
> [2] http://web.mit.edu/ghudson/thoughts/undiagnosing
> [3] http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/1028
> [4] http://subversion.tigris.org/faq.html#changesets
> [5] http://sourcefrog.net/weblog/software/vc/derivatives.html
> [6] http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/scm.html
> [7] http://web.mit.edu/ghudson/thoughts/diagnosing 
> [8] http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Apps/scm.html 

I've read through a bunch of these postings and I remain unconvinced
that one is better than the other.  I agree with [5] that this is solely
a discussion of the format in which changes are maintained; that there
is no difference in content.  I can where there might be some advantage
to the changeset approach when there is a large amount of patching
between branches, but that hasn't ever been the case in GnuCash.  The
GnuCash tree is very sparse, and most branches are terminal release
branches.  Even if the tree wasn't sparse, I don't foresee the need to
cross patch branches like there is in kernel development.

> before CVS came out?!  You've .. um... been around a while, eh?  :)

I've been around longer.  :-)  I did the RCS to CVS conversion for Cisco
Systems in 1990, and wrote the original set of multi-directory
commit/logging scripts that are now part of the CVS distribution.

While Subversion may not be perfect (is anything) or "the best", I
believe its adequate for our needs.  Yes it is centralized, but I have
no problem with that.  If you want distributed support it appears you
can get that by running svn+svk locally.  Assuming we choose subversion
I plan to try just that, but it appears that subversion has already been
tweaked so that my most common operation, diffing my changes against the
base code, already operates fully offline.  That eliminates the main
reason I would have for wanting a distributed system.

David