On May 26, 2010, at 12:26 PM, Antonio, Fabio Di Narzo wrote: > 2010/5/26 Hadley Wickham <had...@rice.edu>: >>>> Yes, that's a very good point (although in my experience it takes a >>>> very long time to do the initial download of the SVN repository). I'm >>>> not an expert on these systems, but I imagine the main downside (other >>>> than speed) of having SVN upstream is that you have to keep the >>>> history linear, >>> >>> That (non-linear history) is IMHO the biggest drawback of DVCS because that >>> means there is no way to link a particular build to the source status and >>> you cannot use globally valid build numbers. >> >> Git (and I'm sure the others) provides a globally unique id for each >> revision. Isn't that sufficient? >> >>> But feature branches are as easily (IMHO even more easily since you can >>> closely monitor what others are contributing) worked on with SVN (routinely >>> used with R) so I'm not sure what DVCS would buy you. >> >> Feature branches are _much_ easier with git - to the point where some >> people suggest using a separate feature branch for every feature you >> develop. >> >>> AFAICS the only benefit of DVCS is that if you are on a remote island >>> without any internet connection you can accumulate multiple commits before >>> merging them back. I can't say that I desperately need that functionality >>> ;). >> >> You have never worked on an airplane or other location without >> internet access? You must have lived a very privileged life ;) > > Some people just have decent web access only at work, and if you work > on your R project like at home or on the train, you're already having > some difficulties. But please, not the airplane argument! (just > joking...). > > Moreover, 'local' commits are way faster than network-based commits. I > can testify: 1microsecond vs 1second delay (or more, depending on how > crappy is your net access) *is* a big difference. On your local > machine, you end up committing much more often, with smaller and > self-contained commits, generally producing a cleaner history. >
I disagree - I don't find commit time having any impact on what I commit. It's always a logical chunk (which is why SVN was such a great step forward from CVS). My RForge does check on commit so I don't even bother waiting for the commit to finish (waiting is just useful if I want the check result - the actual commit is pretty much instantaneous). However, with SVN you'll know immediately if someone else was working on the same issue in the meantime - with DVCS you won't (this happens in R more often that you would think). [Note: again, this is rather about personal preferences I suspect] Cheers, Simon ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
