fyi i spoke too soon, the labs website went a while ago, but the sources machine has returned, well i was able to access it last week.
last chance (i suspect) for those wanting to download the contrib dirs before they disappear - i got mine 😀 -Steve On 13 Feb 2018, at 23:13, Lyndon Nerenberg <lyn...@orthanc.ca> wrote: >>> I struggle to understand how version control is not more actively used. > >> It's not particularly necessary when you have global state with >> snapshots provided by a shared WORM fs. > > I always thought that argument was a bit suspect. And with the loss of > sources.bell-labs.com, it's apparent why. The only revision history was in > the venti. Now that that is lost, so is that history. I know that there are > partial mirrors of sources, but none go all the way back to the dawn of the > sources venti archive. And on the mirrors, we lose the 'blame' functionality > fossil provided by tracking who last updated a file. > > If this had been hosted in an SCM, it would have been so simple to replicate > that full history elsewhere. > > The other bit that snapshots/dumps miss is context. When everyone working on > the code was within shouting distance of the "unix room" that wasn't an > issue. But now, that context has been lost. Annotations about the "why" of > a commit are as important as the "what." diffy(1) answers the "what," but > not the "why." > >> DVCS adds a lot of complexity >> for questionable gain, in that environment. 9front's adoption of >> mercurial is a historical accident rather than a desired outcome. But, >> I understand that most people just want to use the tools they already >> know. It's much easier than learning a new paradigm. > > +100 on DVCS and needless complexity. cvs or sccs provides all the > functionality I've ever needed in an SCM system. Although I confess I have > been seduced by git's ability to instantly create and switch between > branches. It makes trying out "what if" scenarios completely painless. But > it's not enough to convince me to use git except on very rare occasions. > > --lyndon >
