On Jan 27, 2011, at 3:47 PM, Tony Finch wrote:
On Thu, 27 Jan 2011, Neil Brewitt wrote:
Thanks for a sensible response. To be clear - I wasn't comparing with
any other modern systems, just responding to the absolute slandering of
a tool I've seen used very effectively by hundreds of very competent
developers.
Oh man, and there was I thinking you were trying to be satirical.
I especially laughed at your advice on reverting changes.
"Boldly going forward 'cause we can't find reverse!"
Since you're still slagging on Neil, I'm going say that, as a long-time Perforce user, I (as well as the teams I've been in, which were admittedly quite small < 10) also only needed rollback at most once or twice.
We also use code reviews, so rolling back committed changes never really came up. Usually, problems were discovered only after several other commits had been made whereupon it was just easier to fix the fix and check in the new change rather than "roll back", which is, I think, what Neil was driving at.
The article you referenced was talking about the 2008 version of Perforce as
well, so things may have gotten easier there, though again, I wouldn't know
because it's a feature I don't really need. I see it in the shortcut menu for
P4V and just keep on going.
That's the thing about hating software: is the thing you hate about it hateful enough that it makes you stop using it or do you just adjust and move on? For some, the ability to be able to quickly and easily back out foolhardy commits is more important than adjusting developer workflow to stop making said commits.
If you were using git, you'd be able to do this kind of commit-editing up until
the point when you should stop, but git's not going to tell you when to stop
(after you've pushed said commits to a repository from which others have
pulled). I guess that makes git horrible too, in a way, but if you have to/want
to keep using git, you'll just adjust your workflow and move on.
--
Marco Von Ballmoos
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