[development] FAQ: Why is Drupal still using CVS when X is a much better choice?

[Gordon Heydon]

Hi,

I have a couple of projects running in Darcs and the repository does  
not scale at all!  I am talking about small projects and when I get to  
around 500 commits the system really starts getting soooooo sloooooow.

If it needs to be a centralize RCS, the I hope to SVN mainly because  
the git connectivity is so good, and it really works like just another  
git repository. How ever because SVN doesn't know how to tag or branch  
I don't think that the upstream use of branches will work that well.

Gordon.

On 31/07/2008, at 8:42 PM, Karoly Negyesi wrote:

> If we move, we move to SVN. My team, consisting of mostly pretty  
> good coders tried a few distributed RCSes and given this experience  
> I am now vehemently against any DRCS. The concepts are way too heavy  
> and the utilities are not ready. Most of these systems are not that  
> mature thus any docs from 1-2 years ago are worthless thus  
> documentation is not much. When I was for a DRCS in 2005/2006 I was  
> a naive greenhorn sorry for the ruckus I caused then, I now know  
> better.
>
> And back to Drupal contrib, at least with a central repo you can  
> have some central control trying to keep order but with a DRCS all  
> bets are off. Check contrib CVS root for all the crap our CVS  
> challenged contributors add there and think what would ensue with a  
> DRCS.
>
> It's highly debatable that the most serious of our problems, namely  
> understanding RCS would be solved by any DRCS. You sure want to  
> explain multiple heads for one or patch algebra for another? How  
> does 140+ commands sound (and then some has one or two superb  
> powerful switches...) This is a terrible mess.
>
> Now, with SVN we wll need a script to stop tagged things from being  
> changed because they are not immutable as they were in CVS -- but  
> this is readily available and this is the only problem I am aware  
> of. SVN concepts are mapping much better to reality -- one dir per  
> branch/tag. Makes it (much) easier to understand. You already keep a  
> separate directory for your branches so that's how the repository  
> looks like, easy! Thus it _will_ solve some problems -- another  
> problem with DRCS that it does nto solve the problems we have :) SVN  
> tools are available. SVN is mature and documentation is plentiful.  
> svn 1.5 added merge tracking for (much) better team work.
>
> Feature foo and bar might be unavailable for SVN but I can not  
> care , we need something that we, we all of the Drupal community can  
> use.
>
> Once the reboot of my life is complete (read: September) I will  
> rejoin the moving effort and help.
>
> !DSPAM:1000,4891974841741299430736!
>