Re: switch to subversion?

[Jim Blandy <jimb@redhat.com>]

Jason Molenda <jason-swarelist@molenda.com> writes:
> On Fri, Dec 19, 2003 at 11:38:01AM -0800, Per Bothner wrote:
> 
> > I don't know much about the internals and security implications
> > of either, and I'm certainly not volunteering for anything, but
> > curious what people think about the idea.
> 
> 
> I think anyone you talk to will be greatly interested in general
> (it'd be like asking "Who here likes kittens") but IMHO it's more
> trouble than you'd want for a big project at this point.  I don't
> know if any of the system maintainers really has the time to learn
> enough about svn and keep up to date on it to support an installation,
> and there will certainly be a need for support when it is first
> brought up.  Any group switching to svn will have a big cost of
> all the developers trying to re-learn their revision control system
> - even though I know the svn folks are trying to keep it similar
> to a cvs style RCS.

It may be worth mentioning that Subversion is not tied to HTTP,
WebDAV, and Apache.  There is an alternative protocol which tunnels
over ssh just like CVS does, and has a server which is much less
trouble to build, install, and maintain.

Subversion's main funding comes from a group very connected with
Apache, so despite the fact that the alternative protocol is really
much better as the standard access method, it's politically
impractical to highlight it too much.