Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Warren Turkal]

On Monday 26 February 2007 13:50, Robert Treat wrote:
> It's worth keeping in mind that one of the primary reasons we don't have a
> different usage pattern is because CVS makes such a thing painful.  Given
> how much of development is done now, I have a feeling that the community
> might well adopt a distributed development model and strongly benefit from
> it given a tool that makes it manageable, but CVS will certainly never give
> us that.

Well stated.

> > We have the opportunity to
> > wait and see what will emerge in the SCMS competition, and IMHO that's
> > what we should do.  There are many more-pressing things for us to spend
> > time on right now than an SCMS conversion.
>
> 100% Agreed.

I think SVN may provide a nicer migration path to the distributed SCMS simply 
because it supports the atomic changesets. At the very least, it could be a 
much shorter process than what the current conversion takes (about 3.25 hours 
on my laptop). Here's ([1]) another interesting bit.

[1]http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/SVNMigration

wt
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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Robert Treat]

On Sunday 25 February 2007 01:11, Tom Lane wrote:
> "Joshua D. Drake" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > Lastly, who really cares? Does it really matter? No. I would much rather
> > Warren (if he has the skills) put some effort into Patch Review.
>
> That's pretty much the bottom line.  CVS is not so broken that it's a
> problem for us today.  I have no doubt that it could be a problem if we
> had different usage patterns, but we don't.  

It's worth keeping in mind that one of the primary reasons we don't have a 
different usage pattern is because CVS makes such a thing painful.  Given how 
much of development is done now, I have a feeling that the community might 
well adopt a distributed development model and strongly benefit from it given 
a tool that makes it manageable, but CVS will certainly never give us that. 

> We have the opportunity to 
> wait and see what will emerge in the SCMS competition, and IMHO that's
> what we should do.  There are many more-pressing things for us to spend
> time on right now than an SCMS conversion.
>

100% Agreed. 

-- 
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Bruce Momjian]

Warren Turkal wrote:
> On Sunday 25 February 2007 23:23, Tom Lane wrote:
> > It was mentioned upthread that Josh has seen repeated problems with his
> > conversions.
> 
> I am manually inspecting the diff between CVS tag REL_8_1_0 and SVN tag 
> tags/REL_8_1_0/pgsql, and I am not finding any differences in code short of 
> the $Id$-type keyword lines.
> 
> However, I am having a problem with encodings in some of the files. How does 
> cvs handle files with different encodings? For instance, it looks like the 
> Chinese documentation gets messed up upon svn conversion.

I don't know but I do nothing special for the language-specific FAQs in
terms of CVS.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  http://momjian.us
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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Joshua D. Drake]

Tom Lane wrote:
> Warren Turkal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> On Saturday 24 February 2007 23:11, Tom Lane wrote:
>>> I also tend to think that a conversion will be easier in a year or two
>>> than it is today --- the problems noted upthread are certainly a
>>> heads-up that cvs2svn is not yet as robust as one could wish.
> 
>> Cvs2svn seems to make as much sense of CVS data as possible. The only real 
>> problem I have seen is with regard to the malformed files I mentioned 
>> earlier. I haven't seen any other concrete examples.
> 
> It was mentioned upthread that Josh has seen repeated problems with his
> conversions.  I too would like to see some details about that.

Well the only error I get is if I leave the interfaces/Perl directories
intact. The conversion won't work with those directories.

However as Alvaro has said there are wierd changelog message merges. Now
that may be a configurable thing that I could take a look at.


>  One
> thing that I personally would find to be a showstopper for any proposed
> switch is if it fails to maintain our change histories; in particular,
> if it's not still possible to pull an exact copy of any given prior
> release, it'll be no sale.

I agree with this.


>  I gather from this thread that svn has by
> far the closest storage model to cvs of any of the available
> alternatives ... so if svn has conversion problems, what's it gonna
> be like with another one?

Well keep in mind there is more than one tool to do the conversion.
cvs2svn is just one of them. We would have to test.

To me a bigger problem , is finding the mistakes before we migrate.

Joshua D. Drake


> 
>   regards, tom lane
> 


-- 

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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Markus Schiltknecht]

Hi,

Warren Turkal wrote:
Cvs2svn seems to make as much sense of CVS data as possible. The only real 
problem I have seen is with regard to the malformed files I mentioned 
earlier.


cvs2svn (1.x) still heavily relies on timestamps, which is certainly 
correct in most cases. But they are switching to a graph based approach 
for cvs2svn 2.0. I'm basing the reworked cvs_import feature of monotone 
on that same algorithm.


Regards

Markus

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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Warren Turkal]

On Sunday 25 February 2007 23:23, Tom Lane wrote:
> It was mentioned upthread that Josh has seen repeated problems with his
> conversions.

I am manually inspecting the diff between CVS tag REL_8_1_0 and SVN tag 
tags/REL_8_1_0/pgsql, and I am not finding any differences in code short of 
the $Id$-type keyword lines.

However, I am having a problem with encodings in some of the files. How does 
cvs handle files with different encodings? For instance, it looks like the 
Chinese documentation gets messed up upon svn conversion.

wt
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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Warren Turkal]

On Sunday 25 February 2007 23:23, Tom Lane wrote:
> It was mentioned upthread that Josh has seen repeated problems with his
> conversions.  I too would like to see some details about that.  One
> thing that I personally would find to be a showstopper for any proposed
> switch is if it fails to maintain our change histories; in particular,
> if it's not still possible to pull an exact copy of any given prior
> release, it'll be no sale.  I gather from this thread that svn has by
> far the closest storage model to cvs of any of the available
> alternatives ... so if svn has conversion problems, what's it gonna
> be like with another one?

With atomic commits, the exports from svn to other SCMSes seem to work better 
than from cvs to svn (or any other for that matter). I believe the reason is 
that you have to infer the commits in cvs whereas it is explicit in the other 
systems. To convert to git, for instance, I converted to svn and then 
imported that.

wt
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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Tom Lane]

Warren Turkal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> On Saturday 24 February 2007 23:11, Tom Lane wrote:
>> I also tend to think that a conversion will be easier in a year or two
>> than it is today --- the problems noted upthread are certainly a
>> heads-up that cvs2svn is not yet as robust as one could wish.

> Cvs2svn seems to make as much sense of CVS data as possible. The only real 
> problem I have seen is with regard to the malformed files I mentioned 
> earlier. I haven't seen any other concrete examples.

It was mentioned upthread that Josh has seen repeated problems with his
conversions.  I too would like to see some details about that.  One
thing that I personally would find to be a showstopper for any proposed
switch is if it fails to maintain our change histories; in particular,
if it's not still possible to pull an exact copy of any given prior
release, it'll be no sale.  I gather from this thread that svn has by
far the closest storage model to cvs of any of the available
alternatives ... so if svn has conversion problems, what's it gonna
be like with another one?

regards, tom lane

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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Warren Turkal]

On Saturday 24 February 2007 23:11, Tom Lane wrote:
> I also tend to think that a conversion will be easier in a year or two
> than it is today --- the problems noted upthread are certainly a
> heads-up that cvs2svn is not yet as robust as one could wish.

Cvs2svn seems to make as much sense of CVS data as possible. The only real 
problem I have seen is with regard to the malformed files I mentioned 
earlier. I haven't seen any other concrete examples. Could someone fix the 
previously mentioned files in the CVS respository to be valid? After fixing 
those files, I get no messages during import except that some commit comments 
appear to be in some encoding other than ascii. I am in the middle of 
checking commits involving those files to make sure they make sense.

wt
-- 
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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Matthew D. Fuller]

On Sun, Feb 25, 2007 at 06:28:20PM -0500 I heard the voice of
Andrew Dunstan, and lo! it spake thus:
> 
> I don't really drink this koolaid, at least not to the extent of
> disavowing what I said above.

Oh, don't take my message as "You're wrong, you're not taking into
account [...]".  It was meant more as a "This is a convenient place to
make [...] explicit".


It seems that there are really 3 sequential questions here.


1) Do we switch VCS's?

   The averaged answer to this is pretty much "Probably, but not right
   now, and not in the very near future".  Given that, the rest of the
   discussion is probably somewhat pointless; at the least it should
   be carried out with this answer kept firmly in mind.

2) Do we go the DVCS route?, and only after THAT is resolved do we go
   on to:

3) Which VCS?


The feature/capability lists of the various DVCS's contain a mix of
those features which are inherent in (or at least pretty much
universal among) DVCS's as a class, and those which are more
particular to the given system.  But in a discussion of which VCS to
(hypothetically) use, you really want to separate them out so you can
know when you're arguing for/against $SYSTEM, and when you're arguing
for/against $CLASS_OF_SYSTEMS.



-- 
Matthew Fuller (MF4839)   |  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Systems/Network Administrator |  http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/
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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Andrew Dunstan]

Matthew D. Fuller wrote:

On Sat, Feb 24, 2007 at 10:27:38PM -0500 I heard the voice of
Andrew Dunstan, and lo! it spake thus:
  

This decision really belongs to the handful of people who do most of
the maintenance and live with most of any CVS pain that exists: such
as Tom, Bruce, Peter, Neil, Alvaro. Othe people have a right to
voice an opinion, but nobody should be pushing on it.



One thing that the DVCS crowd pushes is that that's _not_ the whole
story.  With CVS (or other centralized systems), the VCS is a
development tool for the few core people, and a glorified
FTP/snapshotting system for everyone else.  With a DVCS, _everybody_
gets a development tool out of it.


  



I don't really drink this koolaid, at least not to the extent of 
disavowing what I said above. There might well be good reasons for using 
a distributed SCM system, and if you look elsewhere in this thread 
you'll see me eyeing Mercurial, which is one such, quite favorably, and 
stating quite definitely that I hope we don't move to Subversion, which 
would be the main centralised alternative. But no matter what system is 
used, there will be a smallish number who will maintain the branches 
that bear our name, and I still think they are the people with the 
principal responsibility in the matter. I'm more interested in making 
things as easy as possible for Tom and Bruce than I am for anyone else.



cheers

andrew

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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Matthew D. Fuller]

On Sat, Feb 24, 2007 at 10:27:38PM -0500 I heard the voice of
Andrew Dunstan, and lo! it spake thus:
> 
> This decision really belongs to the handful of people who do most of
> the maintenance and live with most of any CVS pain that exists: such
> as Tom, Bruce, Peter, Neil, Alvaro. Othe people have a right to
> voice an opinion, but nobody should be pushing on it.

One thing that the DVCS crowd pushes is that that's _not_ the whole
story.  With CVS (or other centralized systems), the VCS is a
development tool for the few core people, and a glorified
FTP/snapshotting system for everyone else.  With a DVCS, _everybody_
gets a development tool out of it.


ObBias: After much resistance, I drank the distributed Kool-Aid.  My
poison of choice is bzr, which is very probably not ready
performance-wise for Pg.  So, I also look forward to a switch
happening not now, but in a year or two, when the performance failings
are historical and bzr can be chosen   8-}


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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Andrew Dunstan]

Joshua D. Drake wrote:

He didn't say *which* dev cycle. He is just enthusiastic and the reality
is this project is about 2 years overdue to run screaming from the
burning building that is CVS.

Does that mean we should change? Only if the people doing development
feel a need to change. However, there is a distinct feeling of *OMG
CHANGE RUN RUN* whenever it comes to anything infrastructure (and
frankly some parts of code) in this project.

It is certainly valid that, if it ain't broke don't fix it. CVS is not
broke for us, it is however barely maintained. That in itself is enough
to consider moving off.

The fact that SVN *is* a CVS replacement and does not change most of the
workflow of existing developers is an additional strong argument to use it.

  


Joshua,

In my case at least you are 180 degrees wrong. The reason I want to wait 
is that I don't want the replacement to be svn. Why go throught the pain 
of adjustment just to be in more or less the same place?


That's why I encouraged you to try setting up some mirrors to other 
systems, notably Mercurial which looks to very promising.  (It's written 
in Python, and has a Trac plugin - it should appeal to you strongly).


cheers

andrew

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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Alvaro Herrera]

Tom Lane wrote:

> I also tend to think that a conversion will be easier in a year or two
> than it is today --- the problems noted upthread are certainly a
> heads-up that cvs2svn is not yet as robust as one could wish.

Yes, which is why Markus is working on improved algorithms for Monotone.

-- 
Alvaro Herrerahttp://www.CommandPrompt.com/
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.

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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Tom Lane]

"Joshua D. Drake" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Lastly, who really cares? Does it really matter? No. I would much rather
> Warren (if he has the skills) put some effort into Patch Review.

That's pretty much the bottom line.  CVS is not so broken that it's a
problem for us today.  I have no doubt that it could be a problem if we
had different usage patterns, but we don't.  We have the opportunity to
wait and see what will emerge in the SCMS competition, and IMHO that's
what we should do.  There are many more-pressing things for us to spend
time on right now than an SCMS conversion.

I also tend to think that a conversion will be easier in a year or two
than it is today --- the problems noted upthread are certainly a
heads-up that cvs2svn is not yet as robust as one could wish.

regards, tom lane

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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Joshua D. Drake]

> Warren,
> 
> what part of "We'd like to watch the SCM space for a while before making
> any decisions" don't you understand?

Andrew hold on,

He didn't say *which* dev cycle. He is just enthusiastic and the reality
is this project is about 2 years overdue to run screaming from the
burning building that is CVS.

Does that mean we should change? Only if the people doing development
feel a need to change. However, there is a distinct feeling of *OMG
CHANGE RUN RUN* whenever it comes to anything infrastructure (and
frankly some parts of code) in this project.

It is certainly valid that, if it ain't broke don't fix it. CVS is not
broke for us, it is however barely maintained. That in itself is enough
to consider moving off.

The fact that SVN *is* a CVS replacement and does not change most of the
workflow of existing developers is an additional strong argument to use it.

All that being said, I welcome Warren's enthusiasm, a lot of the hackers
in this group could use a strong dose of positive thinking about change
around here.

Lastly, who really cares? Does it really matter? No. I would much rather
Warren (if he has the skills) put some effort into Patch Review.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake




-- 

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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Warren Turkal]

On Saturday 24 February 2007 20:27, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> If we were to move now then subversion would probably be the best
> choice, on maturity grounds if nothing else. That might well not be true
> in a year or two. I don't want to move more than once, so waiting and
> seeing makes a lot of sense to me.

This all sounds truly reasonable. I am glad that I could get all your opinions 
on the subject. If you do decide to move to anything else in a couple years, 
hopefully I can help the process somehow.

Thanks,
wt
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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Andrew Dunstan]

Warren Turkal wrote:

On Saturday 24 February 2007 19:51, Douglas McNaught wrote:
  

Not to mention that the beginning of feature freeze sounds like a
particularly bad time to do this.  :)



I never encouraged doing it right now, but I'd like to help when and if it 
does happen. I think at the begginning of a new dev cycle would probably be a 
more appropriate time. However, that doesn't mean we can't start thinking 
now.



  


Warren,

what part of "We'd like to watch the SCM space for a while before making 
any decisions" don't you understand?


cheers

andrew


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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Andrew Dunstan]

Douglas McNaught wrote:

Tom Lane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

  

Warren Turkal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

What would you all think about moving to SVN if the anon CVS checkout can be 
made to work? I'll even volunteer to set it up.
  

What's with the high pressure sales tactics?  It's already been
explained to you that the key PG developers feel no particular reason
to change at this time.



Not to mention that the beginning of feature freeze sounds like a
particularly bad time to do this.  :)


  


And it misses the point I have made, that I don't really want 
compatibility garteways etc for the buildfarm, as it is meant to mimic 
the process that woluld followed by a human to check out, build and test 
by hand. If pg moves then the buildfarm will need to move with it.


This decision really belongs to the handful of people who do most of the 
maintenance and live with most of any CVS pain that exists: such as Tom, 
Bruce, Peter, Neil, Alvaro. Othe people have a right to voice an 
opinion, but nobody should be pushing on it.


If we were to move now then subversion would probably be the best 
choice, on maturity grounds if nothing else. That might well not be true 
in a year or two. I don't want to move more than once, so waiting and 
seeing makes a lot of sense to me.


cheers

andrew


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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Warren Turkal]

On Saturday 24 February 2007 19:51, Douglas McNaught wrote:
> Not to mention that the beginning of feature freeze sounds like a
> particularly bad time to do this.  :)

I never encouraged doing it right now, but I'd like to help when and if it 
does happen. I think at the begginning of a new dev cycle would probably be a 
more appropriate time. However, that doesn't mean we can't start thinking 
now.

wt
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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Warren Turkal]

On Saturday 24 February 2007 19:18, Tom Lane wrote:
> What's with the high pressure sales tactics?  It's already been
> explained to you that the key PG developers feel no particular reason
> to change at this time.

I am not trying to be high pressure. I just wanted to give something back to 
the PostgreSQL community, both by contributing to the discussion and offering 
to contribute time to the effort if I could help that way. I am also not 
trying to get you to do this tomorrow. I'd like to help it happen, if 
possible, though.

> Given the amount of activity currently going on in the SCMS world,
> it seems to me that we should wait another year or two before making
> a decision on switching.  If CVS were a major pain point for us
> then I'd be willing to consider moving now, but it still gets the job
> done.

I am sure that CVS will allow the maintenance of code into the future. There 
are just some systems out there that help manage it better. SVN appears to be 
the best CVS resplacement right now. SVN does everything that CVS does and 
then some. SVN has also been around for over 5 years now and is pretty mature 
and portable. I think that most of the benefits become more clear after 
moving to the system.

As for timing, I am sure that the beginning of a development cycle would be 
better than the beginning of a freeze preparing for release, but it seems 
that not checking things out in the near term will only delay the ability to 
reap the benefits of the newer SCMS systems.

wt
-- 
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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Douglas McNaught]

Tom Lane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> Warren Turkal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> What would you all think about moving to SVN if the anon CVS checkout can be 
>> made to work? I'll even volunteer to set it up.
>
> What's with the high pressure sales tactics?  It's already been
> explained to you that the key PG developers feel no particular reason
> to change at this time.

Not to mention that the beginning of feature freeze sounds like a
particularly bad time to do this.  :)

-Doug

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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Tom Lane]

Warren Turkal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> What would you all think about moving to SVN if the anon CVS checkout can be 
> made to work? I'll even volunteer to set it up.

What's with the high pressure sales tactics?  It's already been
explained to you that the key PG developers feel no particular reason
to change at this time.

Given the amount of activity currently going on in the SCMS world,
it seems to me that we should wait another year or two before making
a decision on switching.  If CVS were a major pain point for us
then I'd be willing to consider moving now, but it still gets the job
done.

regards, tom lane

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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Warren Turkal]

On Friday 23 February 2007 11:11, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> If you are looking for a CVS replacement, that replacement is SVN. I
> don't think anyone can reasonably argue against that statement.

It seems to me that the best reason for keeping CVS is that the build farm 
uses it. There are solutions for maintaining anonymous CVS access (e.g. [1]) 
when moving to SVN.

A secondary problem is that of portability. SVN is the best supported for 
portability. I was able to find links to downloads for most of the archs of 
the build farm from the Subversion site. The previously mentioned ability to 
maintain CVS anonymous access should help with this part also. SVN also has a 
lot of tools for different platforms. There is even plugin for Visual Studio 
for Windows if that kind of thing trips your trigger.

Moving to SVN would maintain the same model of development and get many nice 
features (e.g. atomic commit, cheap tagging, etc.). This type of transition 
has been executed successfully by many open source projects, including KDE 
(big development group) and Bacula (small development group). 

What would you all think about moving to SVN if the anon CVS checkout can be 
made to work? I'll even volunteer to set it up.

[1]http://sam.zoy.org/writings/programming/svn2cvs.html

wt
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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Joshua D. Drake]

Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 23, 2007 at 09:12:27AM -0500, Chris Browne wrote:
>> It looks as though there is a strong "plurality" of PostgreSQL
>> developers that are waiting for some alternative to become dominant.
>> I suspect THAT will never happen.

Actually it has. The problem is different SCMS offer different things.

If you are looking for a CVS replacement, that replacement is SVN. I
don't think anyone can reasonably argue against that statement.

If you are looking for something that is not a CVS replacement, but
offers SCM and has different features (like mercurial) then I agree with
you.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake


> 
> Actually, I think that if one of the SCMs provides some kind of server
> interface that allows clients to keep using the CVS client if they
> want, they would get significant traction. If only because it allows
> people and existing tools to keep working while providing extra
> possibilities.
> 
> IOW provide a nice upgrade path for the transition and a lot of the
> problems switching go away. 
> 
> Then again, it's probably nowhere near as easy as I make it sound :)
> 
> Have a nice day,


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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[A.M.]

On Feb 23, 2007, at 11:24 , Andreas Pflug wrote:




It probably _can_ never happen, because that would have to be a
one-for-all solution, embracing both centric and distributed
repositories, combining contradictionary goals. So the first  
question to

answer is: Will PostgreSQL continue with a single repository (the
project was managed very successfully this way for a long time), or  
try
a distributed approach. IMHO facts would quote for a central  
repository,

which would drastically reduce SCM candidates.


Any distributed SCM can be inherently be used as a central repo. The  
project leaders would merely designate one place from whence builds  
are generated and developers would simply sync with the "central" repo.


In fact, distributed SCMs fit the open source development model  
better because any failure of the "central" repo (crash, buy-out,  
sabotage, needing a project fork) cannot cause chaos: a new "central"  
repo is designated- essentially an instant failover.


Cheers,
M

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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Martijn van Oosterhout]

On Fri, Feb 23, 2007 at 09:12:27AM -0500, Chris Browne wrote:
> It looks as though there is a strong "plurality" of PostgreSQL
> developers that are waiting for some alternative to become dominant.
> I suspect THAT will never happen.

Actually, I think that if one of the SCMs provides some kind of server
interface that allows clients to keep using the CVS client if they
want, they would get significant traction. If only because it allows
people and existing tools to keep working while providing extra
possibilities.

IOW provide a nice upgrade path for the transition and a lot of the
problems switching go away. 

Then again, it's probably nowhere near as easy as I make it sound :)

Have a nice day,
-- 
Martijn van Oosterhout  http://svana.org/kleptog/
> From each according to his ability. To each according to his ability to 
> litigate.


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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Andreas Pflug]

Chris Browne wrote:
> The trouble is that there needs to be a sufficient plurality in favor
> of *a particular move onwards* in order for it to happen.
>
> Right now, what we see is:
>
> - Some that are fine with status quo
> - Some that are keen on Subversion
> - Others keen on Monotone
> - Others considering other options; Darcs, Git, Mercurial, Arch...
>
> There's no majority there, for sure.  No plurality, either.
>
> There has been a "convulsion" of activity surrounding SCM in the last
> couple of years, and I think that the brief trouble that the Linux
> kernel had with Bitkeeper going away has been an *excellent* thing as
> it drew developers to work on the (long languishing) SCM problem.
>
> It looks as though there is a strong "plurality" of PostgreSQL
> developers that are waiting for some alternative to become dominant.
> I suspect THAT will never happen.
>   
It probably _can_ never happen, because that would have to be a
one-for-all solution, embracing both centric and distributed
repositories, combining contradictionary goals. So the first question to
answer is: Will PostgreSQL continue with a single repository (the
project was managed very successfully this way for a long time), or try
a distributed approach. IMHO facts would quote for a central repository,
which would drastically reduce SCM candidates.

Regards,
Andreas



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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Chris Browne]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Richard Levitte - VMS Whacker) writes:
> In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> on Thu, 22 Feb 2007 17:38:26 +0100, Markus 
> Schiltknecht <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
>
> markus> > So far, I'm getting the sense that there are a lot of
> markus> > opinions on what replacement system to use, a bit carelessly
> markus> > before having answered the above questions thoroughly.
> markus> 
> markus> How did you get that impression?
>
> You said it yourself: Most PostgreSQL developers currently want to
> stay with CVS.

I'm not certain that is, statistically, the case.

> Unless there's a majority that wants to move on, I doubt there will be
> a move.  In the end, it has to be a group effort, or it will simply
> not happen.

The trouble is that there needs to be a sufficient plurality in favor
of *a particular move onwards* in order for it to happen.

Right now, what we see is:

- Some that are fine with status quo
- Some that are keen on Subversion
- Others keen on Monotone
- Others considering other options; Darcs, Git, Mercurial, Arch...

There's no majority there, for sure.  No plurality, either.

There has been a "convulsion" of activity surrounding SCM in the last
couple of years, and I think that the brief trouble that the Linux
kernel had with Bitkeeper going away has been an *excellent* thing as
it drew developers to work on the (long languishing) SCM problem.

It looks as though there is a strong "plurality" of PostgreSQL
developers that are waiting for some alternative to become dominant.
I suspect THAT will never happen.

I think instead, that we will see three or maybe four of the newer
SCMs being jointly dominant.

- Subversion has a clear body of happy-enough users for Subversion to
continue.

- Git, being the Linux kernel SCM, will continue unless some
heretofore undiscovered fatal flaw bites it.

- Mercurial seems to have enough user projects to be viable.
(OpenSolaris, ALSA, Xen, ZFS for Linux are probably recognizable
names...)

It seems plausible that one of [Arch, Darcs, Monotone] would also
survive.

This contradicts the notion of there being any single dominant
successor to CVS; if that were the case, that would make a migration
clear.

I think, instead, that we'll continue to see a multiplicity of
choices, meaning that the best we can do is to eventually pick one.
There isn't enough of a 'plurality' of support for any one SCM to
allow that to take place now.
-- 
(reverse (concatenate 'string "ofni.secnanifxunil" "@" "enworbbc"))
http://linuxfinances.info/info/finances.html
Rules of  the Evil Overlord #189. "I  will never tell the  hero "Yes I
was the one who  did it, but you'll never be able  to prove it to that
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Re: [HACKERS] [Monotone-devel] Re: SCMS question

[Chris Browne]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Andrew Dunstan) writes:
> Tom has pointed out, our biggest pain point is
> the occasional wish to move things across directories.

That's the biggest pain that people are normally aware of.

There are things that people don't even bother to try to do with CVS
because they are so impossible as to be stupid ideas.  

Notably, CVS, being an inherently centralized system, doesn't support
the notion of having a secondary repository tracking projects that
haven't been able to be committed into the central project.
-- 
(reverse (concatenate 'string "ofni.secnanifxunil" "@" "enworbbc"))
http://linuxfinances.info/info/finances.html
Rules of  the Evil Overlord #189. "I  will never tell the  hero "Yes I
was the one who  did it, but you'll never be able  to prove it to that
incompetent  old fool."  Chances  are, that  incompetent  old fool  is
standing behind the curtain."  

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