Re: Proposal: Subversion Migration

[Helge Hess]

On 11. Okt 2005, at 17:52 Uhr, Wim Oudshoorn wrote:
> 1 - I don't think CVS is scaring people away, and I don't
>     think changing version control system is going to attract more
>     developers.

Probably true, yes.

> 2 - Last time I looked, subversion did not keep track of merges,
>     so trying to do multiple merges back and forth between
>     branches is still a nightmare.

Not sure what you mean / where the problem is, but merging works fine  
for us.

> 3 - Last time I looked, subversion was not great at operating
>     in a disconnected distributed way.

Subversion is just a better CVS, not a completely new approach to  
version control. So yes, but this is IMHO a good thing because you  
get a good set of features (/bugfixes) w/o a lot of work.
Its basically like "upgrading to CVS 2.0" instead of enforcing a  
completely new approach.

> 4 - From what I heard, git's user interface is still a bit
>     rough around the edges, and I am not sure how well
>     git supports the Microsoft Windows platform
>     or MacOSX.
>
> 5 - gnuarch has also a problem with supporting Microsoft Windows
>     and the userinterface took some getting used to.

I agree that those tools have "interesting concepts" which might be  
well superior to what is provided by CVS/Svn. But you also need to  
learn them, which will consume quite a lot of time until everyone  
gets it right. And then those new ideas still seem to be very much in  
flux (with new tools/forks/xyz popping up every month).

IMHO using such indeed has the potential to move developers away. I  
would really suggest to stay with CVS in this case.


Subversion is almost the same like CVS just with a lot of fixed  
edges. Everyone who knows CVS can immediatly work with Svn and then  
have additional features at a very low learning curve. Svn also has  
very good (and free) documentation.

We have moved OGo from CVS to Svn about a year ago and it was a huge  
success for plenty of reasons. Everyone loves it over CVS.

So I can recommend doing this step from a technical POV. Its a  
reasonable amount of migration work with quite a good gain in features.

Greets,
  Helge
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