Although relatively few PLplot developers are currently enthused about a
move to a distributed version control system (DVCS), that may change in the
future so it is important to pay attention to DVCS articles. Today, I found
the following useful references: "Distributed Version Control Systems: A
Not-So-Quick Guide Through" (http://www.infoq.com/articles/dvcs-guide), and
"Merging and branching in Subversion 1.5 Upcoming release features automatic
merge tracking -- finally!"
(http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-01-2008/jw-01-svnmerging.html).  My
apologies Geoff if you have already mentioned one or both of these.

The impressions I take away from just skimming these articles and some
references they pointed to are as follows:

* git is leading the pack right now of possible DVCS (distributed version
control system) choices in terms of popularity.  (This is confirmed by SF's
support of git rather than Hg or Bzr.)

* There still appears to be some questions about the quality of windows
clients for git.  I assume that issue will disappear in the long run due to
the popularity of git.

* git-svn is well regarded as a compromise measure so that confirms Geoff's
use of it.  Others here may want to give git-svn a try as well if you
already have some git experience or want to acquire some.

* subversion 1.5 (the version used for the SF server, see
http://apps.sourceforge.net/trac/sourceforge/wiki/Subversion) has much
improved merging support.  However, svn servers are backwards compatible in
the sense that they will take on the characteristics of the (potentially
older) version of the svn client.  Thus, it is essential to use an svn-1.5
client for those who want to take advantage of the new subversion merge
capabilities when merging their branch changes back to trunk.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of
Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
__________________________

Linux-powered Science
__________________________

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