From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 32733 invoked by alias); 11 Dec 2002 03:33:45 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gcc-help@gcc.gnu.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: Sender: gcc-owner@gcc.gnu.org Received: (qmail 32726 invoked from network); 11 Dec 2002 03:33:45 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mark.mielke.cc) (216.209.85.42) by sources.redhat.com with SMTP; 11 Dec 2002 03:33:45 -0000 Received: from mark.mielke.cc (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by mark.mielke.cc (8.12.5/8.12.5) with ESMTP id gBB3gPOt020510; Tue, 10 Dec 2002 22:42:25 -0500 Received: (from mark@localhost) by mark.mielke.cc (8.12.5/8.12.5/Submit) id gBB3gOTc020508; Tue, 10 Dec 2002 22:42:24 -0500 Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 19:44:00 -0000 From: Mark Mielke To: Zack Weinberg Cc: "Joseph S. Myers" , Walter Landry , gcc@gcc.gnu.org Subject: Re: source mgt. requirements solicitation Message-ID: <20021211034224.GA20375@mark.mielke.cc> References: <87isy2mj1y.fsf@egil.codesourcery.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <87isy2mj1y.fsf@egil.codesourcery.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4i X-SW-Source: 2002-12/txt/msg00569.txt.bz2 On Mon, Dec 09, 2002 at 11:26:01PM -0800, Zack Weinberg wrote: > Linux is a large project - 4.3 million lines of code - but only one > person has commit privileges on the official tree, for any given > release branch. No matter how good their tools are, this cannot be > expected to scale, and indeed it does not. I have not actually > measured it, but the appearance of the traffic on linux-kernel is that > Linus drops patches on the floor just as often as he did before he > started using Bitkeeper. However, Bitkeeper facilitates other people > maintaining their own semi-official versions of the tree, in which > some of these patches get sucked up. That is bad. It means users > have to choose between N different variants; as time goes by it > becomes increasingly difficult to put them all back together again; > eventually will come a point where critical feature A is available > only in tree A, critical feature B is available only in tree B, and > the implementations conflict, because no one's exerting adequate > centripetal force. > Possibly I am too pessimistic. Actually, the model used for Linux provides substantial freedom. Since no single site is the 'central' site, development can be fully distributed. Changes can be merged back and forth on demand, and remote users require no resources to run, other than the resources to periodically synchronize the data. Unfortunately -- this freedom (as always) comes with a price. The price is that the fully distributed model means that there is no enforced regulation. There is no control, and the same freedom that allows anybody to create a variant, allows them to keep a variant. The models are substantially different, however, I would suggest that neither is wrong in the generic sense. The only questions that really matters are: 1) are you more comfortable in a regulated environment, and if so, then 2) are you willing to live with the limitations that a regulated environment gives you? Some of these limitations include the need to maintain contact with a central repository of some sort, and the need for processing at a central repository of some sort. Personally, I'm with you in that I prefer regulation and enforcement. It keeps me from fsck'ing up my own data. mark -- mark@mielke.cc/markm@ncf.ca/markm@nortelnetworks.com __________________________ . . _ ._ . . .__ . . ._. .__ . . . .__ | Neighbourhood Coder |\/| |_| |_| |/ |_ |\/| | |_ | |/ |_ | | | | | | \ | \ |__ . | | .|. |__ |__ | \ |__ | Ottawa, Ontario, Canada One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them... http://mark.mielke.cc/