Re: switch to subversion?

[Ian Lance Taylor <ian@wasabisystems.com>]

Benjamin Kosnik <bkoz@redhat.com> writes:

> >General agreement with this, also I don't think subversion scales to a
> >project the size of gcc (much less /cvs/src!) yet, and I am currently
> >thinking that monotone (http://www.venge.net/monotone/) will suit our
> >purposes better.  It isn't ready yet either, though.
> 
> I would love to see gcc start testing monotone. I concurr: it's looking
> very sharp. (It's also been tested with the gcc repository, which gives
> me hope.)

I would like to see a free version control system which implements
change-sets.  (My understanding is that Bitkeeper implements them.)

In my mind, a change-set is essentially a large patch file (it would
typically implement a particular feature).  Applying a change set
essentially means running patch.  A version control system which
supports change-sets makes it easy to create and to apply change-sets.
It should do version tracking of change-sets, so that a single working
tree can be the combination of several change-sets, and it should be
possible to update a working tree to a new copy of a particular
change-set.

The application of change-sets is trickier than a three-way merge,
because there is no known ancestor revision, so conflicts are hard to
handle.  But the concept is powerful.

I wouldn't be very enthusiastic about switching to a new version
control system if it didn't support change-sets.  While I'm ready to
believe that subversion and monotone are a better CVS, in my opinion
CVS itself still works well enough for what it does.


Ian