Re: FAQ Q: another version control system?

[Andy Parkins <andyparkins@gmail.com>]

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