On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 12:25 PM, Pavel Sanda <[email protected]> wrote: > Nico Williams wrote: >> It is precisely because locking doesn't scale that we have branching >> and merging. Locking simply does not scale. This is true even of >> documents (as opposed to source code). > > Conditions I had in mind were: > a) > - small team working on e.g. scientific paper
I believe merging is easier than locking, even for small teams. The alternative is dealing with someone locking a file then going on vacation -- you can break the lock, but either they lose their work or... they have to merge. Merging is *not* hard provided there's a way to display the conflicts. Displaying conflicts usefully can be really hard for some data, such as LyX documents, but only due to the lack of suitable tools. > - avoid endless email exchanges of manuscript (locking exists by definition) This is true whether you use git or SVN. > - only subset of people are "IT-aware" while the others are capable at > most of "push the red button" to commit the change and unlock the > given chapter. > b) Again, merging is not hard. > In such world even knowing what "merging" or "branching" means qualifies > you as someone who really does not need LyX to manipulate version tracking > and who will stay happily with specialized software or command line :) You don't need to know what branching is. You do need to know what merging is, but it's not hard.
