Bèr Kessels wrote:
* People mentioned in several occasions that CVS is difficult stuff. I think this is a known fact for many, but it is a very important fact. Dries talked about 'keeping code accessible for new developers' often. Well, Drupal code may be that, I think the 'required' CVS skills to actually use/contribute the work defeat a lot of that accessible code. Just a thing to remember, IMO.
I don't want to start too much of an argument about version control systems and software (even though, um, the occasional flamewar is fun), but Bèr is raising some issues that especially apply to CVS, which has not had a major revision since I started working with it almost 10 years ago. There are several kinds of things that get screwed up in CVS more than in newer systems. First is the notorious "forgot -kb on cvs add" problem. But tags and branches are right up there. I personally think that rather than a talented human programmer, an evil demon was actually tasked with designing CVS's branch system. It's a mess, and just about every popular system created since has come up with a less error prone, easier to understand solution. Most of these solutions are more efficient to boot, and do a better job in preserving history on a file as its name is changed or when the file is merged (in some systems). So if we are going to start using branches more, and encouraging more developers to play with tags and branch tags, it might be worth studying whether or when to migrate to a more modern system. There are at least 3 candidates for this, and most of you know what they are, so I'm not going to name them. Any of these systems might be a better choice than CVS. I appreciate that tremendous work (especially in writing custom modules and automation) has been invested by folks like killes into the current CVS set up, so I know that such a change would need a very long lead time. But since this is very early in Drupal 6 time, it might be worth putting together a plan that might start a transition after Drupal 6 is final and has settled down, so that by the time Drupal 7 is ready, we can transition to a more modern system. My 2 cents (or 2 bits, even). Rob