Re: FAQ Q: another version control system?

On Wednesday 2007 May 02, Peter wrote:

I suspect you are a troll as your questions have such obvious answers that 
they hardly seem worth giving.  Despite that, I'll answer them for the sake 
of the googlers who stumble on your message.

Do we really need another version control system?  As I understand it,
this is like a distributed, central-server-less, CVS, sorry, SVN
server.

Why didn't the subversion guys just add their features to CVS?  The subversion 
guys are not stupid people - why haven't they added these features to 
subversion?  The answer is that they fundamentally don't fit.  Distributed 
version control is not just something you patch in later as a feature - it is 
designed in from the beginning.  Have a look at the monstrosity that is svk 
(distributed version control with a subversion backend).

But why isn't such a feature set added into SVN?  Why do I have to
download another version control system just so that I can "git"
libxcb and X11 so that I can compile gtk so that I can compile xchat
so that I can go onto the IRC server for madwifi so that I can ask
someone there why their wifi drivers don't create a /dev/wifi0 on my
system so that I can get my wireless working????

Given that git is converting a lot of subversion/CVS users - including the 
projects you list above, do you not think that they might have had a reason 
for doing so?  Don't ask git developers why they wrote git - go and ask those 
projects why they are using it.

Practically, I think you're overstating the difficulty of "downloading another 
version control system".  On debian/ubuntu you would do:

 $ sudo apt-get install git-core

If you really did want to compile these things, then you would do:

 $ cd src
 $ git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/xorg/xserver.git
 $ git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/xcb.git
 ... etc ...

But are you seriously suggesting that you need to compile the latest and 
greatest X11/xcb/gtk/xchat just to chat on IRC?  Why not just do

 $ sudo apt-get install xchat

If your distribution doesn't supply an apt-get equivalent then you must have 
picked one where you compile everything from source by hand - in which case - 
what are you moaning about - you did this to yourself?



Andy

-- 
Dr Andy Parkins, M Eng (hons), MIET
andyparkins@gmail.com