From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Junio C Hamano Subject: Re: CVS -> SVN -> Git Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2007 13:58:36 -0700 Message-ID: <7vzm1yg0sj.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net> References: <469804B4.1040509@alum.mit.edu> <46a038f90707132230n120e6392uaf5cd86ff10b6012@mail.gmail.com> <4699034A.9090603@alum.mit.edu> <20070714195252.GB11010@thyrsus.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: Michael Haggerty , Martin Langhoff , Julian Phillips , git@vger.kernel.org, dev To: esr@thyrsus.com X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Sat Jul 14 22:58:43 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git@gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.176.167]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1I9ohO-0007lU-MO for gcvg-git@gmane.org; Sat, 14 Jul 2007 22:58:43 +0200 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1763180AbXGNU6j (ORCPT ); Sat, 14 Jul 2007 16:58:39 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1762873AbXGNU6j (ORCPT ); Sat, 14 Jul 2007 16:58:39 -0400 Received: from fed1rmmtao104.cox.net ([68.230.241.42]:52138 "EHLO fed1rmmtao104.cox.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755997AbXGNU6i (ORCPT ); Sat, 14 Jul 2007 16:58:38 -0400 Received: from fed1rmimpo02.cox.net ([70.169.32.72]) by fed1rmmtao104.cox.net (InterMail vM.7.08.02.01 201-2186-121-102-20070209) with ESMTP id <20070714205838.IJVU1393.fed1rmmtao104.cox.net@fed1rmimpo02.cox.net>; Sat, 14 Jul 2007 16:58:38 -0400 Received: from assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net ([68.5.247.80]) by fed1rmimpo02.cox.net with bizsmtp id PYyc1X00C1kojtg0000000; Sat, 14 Jul 2007 16:58:37 -0400 In-Reply-To: <20070714195252.GB11010@thyrsus.com> (Eric S. Raymond's message of "Sat, 14 Jul 2007 15:52:52 -0400") User-Agent: Gnus/5.110006 (No Gnus v0.6) Emacs/21.4 (gnu/linux) Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: esr@thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) writes: > So, I hear about plans to make cvs2svn generate something other than > Subversion, and here's my instant reaction: > > DON'T DO IT! > > This is not because I think Subversion is some kind of final answer to the > VCS problem. Fame from it -- I'm moving towards Mercurial. No, the > real reason I think this would be a waste of time is subtler than that. > > Subversion, by design, is very good at capturing the metadata from > SCCS and RCS and the various CVS variants floating around. In fact, > lifting from those into Subversion is basically lossless - the real > problems are that (a) as Michael notes, the data you're losslessly > lifting is scratchy, and (b) as I've noted, you have to use heuristics > to coalesce file histories into changesets and those don't always make > the links they should. Converting to Subversion might be lossless, but is it really the most convenient intermediate format for other people to convert further from? Even after xxx2svn overcomes the problems (a) and (b) you noted above, my impression has been that svn2yyy needs to work harder than necessary to grok the branches/ and tags/ that artificially are flattened, only because Subversion does not do branches nor tags, but just represents them as copies.