On 5/18/2013 12:01 PM, Zé wrote:
On 05/18/2013 07:16 PM, David Chapman wrote:
You are pretty insistent that there is One True Way to use branches in
development.
No, I'm stating that if all a SCM does is track changes made to the
contents of a directory and you rely on changes made to that directory
to emulate branches, then there are some significant downsides to this
approach when compared with SCM systems which do offer support for
branching.
You've missed the point. You have a specific definition of branching
and do not believe that anything else can be called branching. In your
message to Thorsten Schöning, you said that branch history should be
deleted if the branch is deleted. That is fundamentally in opposition
to the definition of Subversion, which is meant to retain all of a
project's history. People ask for an "obliterate" feature all the time
after committing a file with private information, e.g. passwords. That
is hard by design within Subversion, and most of its users are glad. I,
for one, would object strenuously if the history of a branch were
deleted just because it was never merged into trunk. In my business
(Electronic Design Automation), knowing what doesn't work (and why) is
often just as important as knowing what does work.
As you may understand, not everyone has a lot of time to spend on side
projects, and when they do then there's the problem of attaining the
insight and technical know-how to do so.
In spite of that, I don't believe that not being able to spend time
contributing to a project justifies declaring a specific suggestion to
be tabu. Forbidding anyone from, or attacking them for mentioning a
downside or a shortcoming doesn't make it go away, and doesn't make
the project any better than what it already is. What does contribute
to its improvement is providing suggestions on ways to improve it,
such as suggesting that implementing a sorely missed feature would be
a significant improvement. Do you agree?
As I said, you have a specific definition of branching and are insisting
that it is the only valid definition even though it would require a
fundamental revision of Subversion's data model. You are insisting that
branching be implemented your way even though others disagree. This is
not helpful.
Saying "+1 for branches as a first class object" is helpful because it
allows developers to prioritize their donated time, and to choose a
definition and implementation that balance features vs. implementation
complexity. But unless you are willing to dig into the internals of
Subversion and understand how it is used, insisting on a particular
definition and implementation is not helpful.
--
David Chapman dcchap...@acm.org
Chapman Consulting -- San Jose, CA
Software Development Done Right.
www.chapman-consulting-sj.com
