[CMake] Re: Migration to subversion

[Brandon Van Every]

On Jan 5, 2008 5:58 PM, Sebastien BARRE <sebastien.barre at kitware.com> wrote:
> At 1/5/2008 09:24 PM, Jesper Eskilson wrote:
>
> >Those of you who haven't already read "Version Control and 'the
> >80%'" should do so (http://blog.red-bean.com/sussman/?p=79) *before*
> >forming your opinion on centralized version control.
>
> Interesting read,

I found the 80/20 formulation kind of obnoxious.  People who regularly
swallow the intricacies of Java and C++ for a living, are incapable of
swallowing DVCS concepts like "push" and "pull?"  Baloney.  It's a
question of willingness to do so, or mandate to do so.  When there's
no will, and no mandate, then techies love to bitch and moan about any
perceived inconvenience or learning curve.

> especially the paragraph about: "In a nutshell:
> with a centralized system, people are forced to collaborate and
> review each other's work; in a decentralized system, the default
> behavior is for each developer to privately fork the project.".

I'm not impressed by any of the FUD I've heard about DVCS.  There's a
consistent theme of assuming that technology implies policy.  In DVCS,
it doesn't.  The idea that developers privately fork projects "by
default" is completely silly.  You think I had time to maintain my own
private version of Chicken Scheme?  Heck no.  Anybody who's really
against DVCS should get some experience with it before passing
judgment.

> Anyway. Before flaming each others, please bear in mind that the
> decision remains in our hands, at Kitware.

Personally, I refute the case that there's anything deeply wrong with
DVCS that should bar its use.  Darcs never got in my way.

Is there anything *compelling* about DVCS for the CMake community's
needs?  I don't know.  At present, I don't care.  I've yet to do any
work in the CMake source pool; I just file bugs and edit the wiki.

Mozilla is the study for Mercurial.  It's still early days for them,
they're in transition from CVS.  I suggest watching them, to see what
benefits they gain.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every