Re: Distributed SCM in Gnome (Was: Git vs SVN (was: Can we improve things?))

[Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>]

On Wed, 2007-09-12 at 10:13 +0300, Kalle Vahlman wrote:
> 2007/9/11, Bryan Clark <bclark redhat com>:
> > GNOME is not in need of a DSCM or any other kind of new SCM.  For source
> > control, SVN works fine, just like CVS worked fine.  I'm not looking to
> > argue the features of one DSCM above another or what we have now, but really
> > the controlling of the source code isn't the problem this DSCM debate is
> > circling.
> 
> The problem which prompted this debate again was the infamous SVN
> accounts lag. DSCM allows people to comfortably work with "their repo"
> and easily get a subset of their current work to a patch for
> submitting to eg. bugzilla. Currently, you'd need to take a checkout
> for each "line of work" you start unless you want to backup your work
> manually with svn diff (urgh). Not so hot, specially since if you are
> not on the net all the time.
> 
> If you can comfortably work without access to the central repo, the
> need for the access becomes less of an issue. Thus helping people keep
> patient with the accounts lag, possibly even making it unneccessary
> for some.
> 
> So, in my opinion, GNOME does need DSCM as a *part* of the solution
> for the current problems.

There is another advantage of git (and I guess other DSCMs). If you
start hacking locally on some cracked up idea that you have no idea if
you will ever publish to the world you can still just run "git init" in
the source dir and instantly have a revision control system. When you
then want to publish this to the world it is very easy to push it to a
central repo. This means git projects tend to have full history from
first file creation, wheras cvs/svn project have a huge "first import"
checkin and no history before that.