Re: BitBucket: GPL-ed KitBeeper clone

Linus Torvalds
2003-03-09T03:34:11Z

On Sun, 9 Mar 2003, Roman Zippel wrote:
> On Sat, 8 Mar 2003, Zack Brown wrote:
>
> > * Distributed rename handling.
>
> This actually a very bk specific problem, because the real problem under
> bk there can be only one src/SCCS/s.foo.c.

I don't think that is the issue.

[ Well, yes, I agree that the SCCS format is bad, but for other reasons ]

> A separate repository doesn't have this problem

You're wrong.

The problem is _distribution_. In other words, two people rename the same
file. Or two people rename two _different_ files to the same name. Or two
people create two different files with the same name. What happens when
you merge?

None of these are issues for broken systems like CVS or SVN, since they
have a central repository, so there _cannot_ be multiple concurrent
renames that have to be merged much later (well, CVS cannot handle renames
at all, but the "same name creation" issue you can see even with CVS).

With a central repostory, you avoid a lot of the problems, because the
conflicts must have been resolved _before_ the commit ever happens - put
another way, you can never have a conflict in the revision history.

Sepoarate repostitories and SCCS file formats have nothing to do with the
real problem. Distribution is key, not the repository format.

Linus