Executive summary: woodchuck charges into battle over software bloat, sitting astride Rozinante, his favorite hobby horse. Nothing is concluded, but onlookers are mildly amused.
On Sat, 2 Dec 2006, John Fiore wrote: > If you feel this way, why are you bothering? CVS works just fine. Somebody else brought it up. I am seeing whether it's a practical idea. > > conclusion: subversion is Linux-oriented bloatware that purports > > to improve on cvs. The improvements on cvs appear to be minimal, > > the system cost is *stunning*. Its authors should have improved > > cvs, not forked off something with a GUI and a bunch of goofy script > > These seem to be pretty bold conclusions based on what appears to be > just the software requirements. Well, I'm the bold one, aren't I? Let's say this is not the *first* software package I've ever seen. > There are good and bad things about both CVS and subversion. Though > it doesn't have any use to me, some people like subversion because of > the different transports it supports (which probably adds > significantly to the dependency list). One thing I happen to like > about subversion is the fact that there is a version for the entire > directory tree, not just individual files. Rdist does that, too. > > > Of course, Linux purports > > to improve on SYSV. (Do they have pty's yet??) > > Objection. Relevance, your honor? Illustrates by notorious simile something that purports to improve and replace another thing that did not need replacement and for various reasons should/will not be replaced. Also just a gratuitous dig at Linux. I don't *think* they actually *do* have pty's yet. (The SysV R4 pseudo terminals). They didn't when I gave up on following Linux/herding cats. Subversion should have been a superset of CVS. There's an OpenCVS project, isn't there? > > (My first Unix PeeCee had a 40MB disk.) > > OK. I completely see your point, but this sounds an awful lot like my > father-in-law complaining that cars today have a purchase price higher > than the house that he bought 40 years ago. Not exactly. It is like this: Software has bugs. The number of these bugs is not linear in the size of the software source code. It is super_linear [0], because of complexity issues. Critical software cannot be large, reliable and cheap. (Unless it's from OpenBSD ;-) [0] I mean: NBUG = A + B*(NLINE**C) where C>1 There are other terms, including a scary one in "NPROGRAMMER" that has the form ... e**(K*NPROGRAMMER) There are still others including "DAYSTODEADLINE" and "MEETINGHOURSPERWEEK" but I haven't identified their coefficients. Other researchers maintain that a simple power series expanded in (NBOSS-1) is sufficient to explain NBUG. Subversion has 45MB source distribution. All of perl is 59MB. I can say with assurance that svn has bugs, simply from the size. > While you're waiting 15 years for your dependencies to download, why > don't you take a look at the subversion red bean book here: > http://svnbook.red-bean.com/ ? Glad you mentioned that. This is the documentation; the man page is just a referral to it. GRRRRRR. Comment: this is not the way utilities should be documented. Rant: These kidz couldn't gen a man page, out of 45 bleeding megabytes of source, they couldn't supply a lousy man page. Well, they could gen an O'Reilly book for glory. They have multiple mailing lists and a club of some kind for a COPY program. But no man page. Maybe someone will bring this up at their next convention in Las Vegas. This is the installation list from subversion: /deleted, TOO LONG/. It installed ONE HUNDRED FIFTEEN FILES! That doesn't include what its dependencies (tcl, python, ruby, some sort of redundant database, some sort of *apache* run-time rubbish, some cruft named swig, and god knows what else, did to my innocent little system.) It installed THIRTY-NINE libraries in /usr/local/lib. There is just no reason for that. There is no use for 39 libraries. *ONE* is acceptable. How many libraries does CVS need? Some of those dependencies are "build" dependencies, not run-time. (That includes python, ruby and swig). That mitigates in subversion's favor, and so I've trimmed this post of its more colorful analogies and blistering literary allusions. The rant about "no man page" still stands, though. > If there's nothing there that appeals to you, then save yourself the > aggravation and stick with the devil you know. The aggravation? Shucks, man, this is how I have fun! I'm not going to use it or cvs. Mind you, subversion looks like it has desireable features, and probably has a killer graphical user interface with 3D icons. (That sounds sarcastic, but I meant it seriously). Another thing in subversion's favor is that they don't use GPL. ("Sancho, attack the left giant, if you please!") You'll probably see me recommending it in future for someone looking to rcs/cvs/sccs a new, large, coding or similar collaborative project, if that person does not already have cvs, or knowledge of cvs, or must work with a cvs-less platform, or if some feature of subversion is alluring. Remember, what I was after (on Vim del Toboso's behalf) was a slick way to do this bit of pseudo code: For each filename in some list: if /here/filename is different from /there/filename then copy and encrypt /here/filename to /there/filename and be quick about it endif Marmota de la Mancha -- "Confound these wretched rodents! For every one I fling away, a dozen more vex me!" -- Doctor Doom _______________________________________________ Openbsd-newbies mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.theapt.org/listinfo/openbsd-newbies
