Re: Kernel SCM saga..

Daniel Phillips
2005-04-07T17:08:16Z

On Thursday 07 April 2005 11:32, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Thu, 7 Apr 2005, David Woodhouse wrote:
> > On Wed, 2005-04-06 at 08:42 -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > > PS. Don't bother telling me about subversion. If you must, start
> > > reading up on "monotone". That seems to be the most viable alternative,
> > > but don't pester the developers so much that they don't get any work
> > > done. They are already aware of my problems ;)
> >
> > One feature I'd want to see in a replacement version control system is
> > the ability to _re-order_ patches, and to cherry-pick patches from my
> > tree to be sent onwards. The lack of that capability is the main reason
> > I always hated BitKeeper.
>
> I really disliked that in BitKeeper too originally. I argued with Larry
> about it, but Larry (correctly, I believe) argued that efficient and
> reliable distribution really requires the concept of "history is
> immutable". It makes replication much easier when you know that the known
> subset _never_ shrinks or changes - you only add on top of it.

However, it would be easy to allow reordering before "publishing" a revision,
which would preserve immutability for all published revisions while allowing
the patch _author_ the flexibility of reordering/splitting/joining patches
when creating them. In other words, a virtuous marriage of the BK model with
Andrew's Quilt.

Regards,

Daniel