Re: RFC - tarball/patch server in BitKeeper

Tupshin Harper
2003-12-15T00:19:40Z

Larry McVoy wrote:

>On Sun, Dec 14, 2003 at 03:17:04PM -0800, Tupshin Harper wrote:
>
>
>>I'm sure many people will find this useful. Personally (and this is not
>>intended as any sort of flame bait), I just want a way to get access to
>>all raw bk changesets for a given project.
>>
>>
>
>I'm sure you do, I've read your postings on various SCM mailing lists.
>You'll have to get your test data elsewhere, sorry, we're not in the
>business of helping you develop a competing product. Using BK to do
>that is a violation of the free use license and I'm sure you are aware
>of that.
>
>
Of course...that's the only reason why it's an issue.

>
>
>>All existing methods of
>>getting information out of a bk repository either involve running bk
>>yourself, or getting incomplete information. You have argued
>>(succesfully) that the CVS export doesn't lose very much information,
>>but an argument can be made that any information loss is too much. After
>>all, the information I am talking about is simply what was put into the
>>system by the developers in the first place.
>>
>>
>
>Nonsense! It's the information put in there by BitKeeper. The BK2CVS
>export is an almost perfect mirror of what you'd get if the developers
>were using CVS or Subversion or whatever.
>
>
What are are effectively doing, then, is creating vendor lock-in based
on file format...a very Microsoftian approach. You are encouraging
developers to adopt your tool, but then telling them that if they ever
want to adopt a different tool, then they will have to forego using some
of the information that they created using your tool. So the decision of
which tool to be used becomes based on pain of switching, and not based
on technical merit. Hmmm.

-Tupshin