Re: Subversion Migration: the importance of maturity.

[Mark McLoughlin <markmc redhat com>]

Hi Miguel,

On Fri, 2005-05-13 at 12:07 -0400, Miguel de Icaza wrote:

[snip]

> But I think that our source code control system choice should not be
> based purely on new features or new development paradigms that we might
> want to use, but also on the reliability, community and support that we
> can get.
> 
> If we do a feature comparison, and we decided that "multiple trees and
> changesets" are crucial to Gnome above all else, then clearly Monotone
> and Arch might be the tool to use.  But in my opinion there are too many
> other dimensions to the problem.

	I dunno - if we decided that distributed development etc. weren't the
most important things, and that maturity etc. were more important well
then I'd see "stick with CVS" as the obvious choice.

	Maybe its just pure ignorance on my part, but I don't see anything on
your list which would hugely benefit GNOME. Its probably that you're
only comparing Subversion to other proposed systems, but I think its
important to not forget that sticking with the status quo for now is
always an option.

	So, what exactly are the really important benefits (for GNOME) over
*CVS* that you've left off the list?  File re-naming, atomic
commits ... ?

[snip]

> That is why I advocate a more conservative approach when picking our
> source code control system.

	Its a question of just how conservative, though, right ? :-)

	My opinion from the sidelines is that there's no huge rush here - yes,
CVS can be a pain, but we've learnt to deal with that pain. When/if we
do make a switch, I wouldn't like it to be some intermediate system. The
fact the distributed development is a feature that so many hackers seem
to want suggests to me that if we switch to Subversion now, we'd only be
switching to something else in the not so distant future.

	(At the Boston Summit the agreement, AFAIR, was that a group consisting
of the people with strong opinions on all sides of this debate get
together and just hammer out a decision. This thread isn't moving us any
closer to a decision)

Cheers,
Mark.