Re: Design by Community

["Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro" <gjc inescporto pt>]

On Wed, 2006-02-08 at 23:57 +0800, Davyd Madeley wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 08, 2006 at 02:20:15PM +0000, Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro wrote:
> 
> > > perhaps but the real question is why isn't this a branch in CVS? Why is 
> > > there a need for clandestine development?
> > 
> >   Maybe because CVS branches are inherently complicated.  And maybe
> > because you have to ask permission of the maintainer before creating a
> > branch on a module.  And maybe because if everyone starts making lots of
> > branches, your namespace of CVS branches/tags starts to get polluted
> > very quickly.
> 
> There is a saying here about poor workmen and tools.
> 
> Perhaps CVS is not the best revision control system invented by man,
> but by the same token it works pretty good, has enabled us to create
> an excellent product, and seems to work for most of what we want to
> do 90% of the time.
> 
> Interestingly, if you ask to create a development branch, most
> maintainers will say yes.

>  If you create a branch like
> novell-development, you get the power to use it over and over again.

  A CVS branch has limited use.  If you create a branch at some point in
time, you can work on your stuff all you want, but as side effect you
suddenly stop tracking HEAD development.  From time to time you need to
1) extract a patch with changes from branch; 2) create a new branch
based on HEAD; 3) reapply your patch to the new branch.   At least, I
don't think you can 'move' a branch, although it could be the case of my
lack of CVS expertise.  And if you can't move a branch you have create a
new one, thus starting to pollute the tag/branch namespace.

  And I have a case when I forgot to add a regular tag at the start of a
branch.  So now I'm finding it very hard to obtain a diff of all changes
since I started the branch.  I'll have to do it manually, file by file,
looking at revision numbers :-/

  CVS branches are hard, you have to admit it ;-)

-- 
Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro
<gjc inescporto pt> <gustavo users sourceforge net>
The universe is always one step beyond logic.