On Tue, 22 Aug 2006 10:28:24 +0200, Tchize <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I did not follow this thread, but am curious on this point on the wiki > page. It's stated 'good branch handling' on CVS and SVN as no. Am sorry > to raise it now, but i have been using branching on CVS at work for a > while and we never had any problem with branching.
I would like to second that. As a GIMP developer, I have been using CVS branches extensively: we always maintain HEAD together with at least one stable branche, while several experimental features are developed in their own branches, such as the recent Google Summer of Code projects. We also perform a lot of merges from the HEAD branch to the stable branch and sometimes from the stable or experimental branches to the HEAD branch, as you can see in the ChangeLog from the stable branch: http://developer.gimp.org/ChangeLog-2.2 So regardless of how the different systems support branching and merging, I think that the support offered by CVS and SVN is good enough in practice, including for large projects. So all systems would get 1 point there. [...] > In fact, reading the wiki page, svn has all the request and all the nice > to have features (bringing a total of 20 and a total2 of 36.5) I think that the scores could even be adjusted further: - The "learning curve from CVS" has not been taken into account. This should not be underestimated. This would probably deserve more than 1 point (which would be given to CVS and SVN). By the way, I do not think that Bzr or Mercurial are really easier to learn than Darcs (or Arch or Cogito/git), but that is of course subjective. - The popularity of each system should also be taken into account, for two reasons: using similar tools would be better for those who work on several projects (daimonin, cfplus, cf-extended, or other projects from GNOME, KDE, Xorg, various Linux distributions, etc.) and using a popular tool means that it is easier to get support or to switch to a different host in case there is some problem with the current host of the repositiory. Again, CVS and SVN would get an extra point here. > Another fact that was not taken into account it the fact sourceforge > hosted revision control has the advantage of not having to duplicate > user accounts. You can use the same accounts for revision control, bug > tracking, releasing, web management, and project admins can manage all > that using a single interface. Indeed, this is also an important point. The integrated support for releases and downloads is not too critical because it only concerns a small subset of the developers (often a singleton) but having good links between the bug/patch/request tracker and the source code management system is a big plus for most developers. So the systems supported by SourceForge get an extra point here. I also like the way the GNOME and KDE projects have nice cross-references between the Bugzilla entries and the corresponding CVS or SVN changes: commit messages mention bug numbers that will be automatically linked to the bug reports in the viewcvs/viewsvn interfaces, and the comments closing the bug reports include the corresponding commit message. > The best solution to decide will probably be a vote amongst commiters as > everyone probably has it's preferences. Yes, because although the matrix is nice, it does not and cannot accurately reflect the opinions of all developers: some reasons why some developers would prefer some systems over another may not have been stated yet in this discussion, or maybe they have been stated but not included in the matrix (for example, I suggested to rate the support for partial checkouts and for partial updates). Also, some developers may think that some features are more important than others and give them more weight. For example, I think that the support for renames is a "top feature" or maybe even a "key requirement" rather than "nice to have" because this could be very useful when renaming map directories (and being able to track the changes across branches and merges). I would therefore count more than one point for this feature. Same for the availability of hosting services like SourceForge, which is worth more than 1 point according to Mark's TOTAL2 formula in which the weights are 2, 1.5 and 1. So if I take into account all the changes mentioned above and promote or demote some features accordingly, I end up with a rather different table: CVS SVN Hg BZR DARCS Key Requirements (11) 10 10 6 8 8 Top Features (7) 6 7 5.5 4 4 Nice to Haves (6) 3 5 6 6 6 TOTAL (24) 19 22 17.5 18 18 TOTAL2 (38.5) 32 35.5 26.3 30 30 Now we get a totally different picture: SVN comes on top, followed by our good old CVS, then come Bzr and Darcs, and then only Mercurial. Of course some may claim that the updated table is biased, but that's the whole point! I give more weight to the features that I consider more important: availability of hosting solutions (multiple choices if possible), support for renames, support for partial updates, etc. Others may have different priorities and that's fine for me. The current table is probably biased toward what Mark or Alex consider as being important. If there was a vote, this updated table would help me to decide how I would vote. Others with different priorities would probably vote differently. -Raphaël _______________________________________________ crossfire mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
