[Monotone-devel] Re: Too many heads?

[Bruce Stephens]

"K. Richard Pixley" <address@hidden> writes:

[...]

> If I'm working remote on my laptop, and the project is large, then I
> may only be pushing my work, especially if the pull is lengthy
> across my thin wire.  If everyone is only pushing his work, then no
> one even sees that the central repository has multiple heads.

Of course, but that approach would only work if nobody needs to see
anyone else's work (because they're changing distinct sets of files,
and probably with fixed interfaces between them).  I guess that's
possible sometimes, but in those particular cases merging (I'm
assuming someone needs to see the combined work at some point) will be
automatic anyway, so it's not so horrible.

> I agree that this is rapidly becoming a more and more remote corner
> case the more I understand it.

I'd hope so.  When I first saw this notion of multiple heads they
worried me in much the same way.  However the way they're implemented
seems to me to make things reasonable.

> And I also agree that the failure mode when churn becomes too high
> will likely be quite noticable and call a halt to most work.  I see
> no reason why this scale boundary would be significantly different
> from other common free software tools like arch, subversion, etc.

I think so.  monotone's feature of multiple heads adds a little
complexity, but so far it doesn't seem to be causing much of a
problem, and my guess is that it won't in most environments.

[...]