wxruby users - Aug 2006 - Re: bzr / Subversion / CVS

On Fri, 2006-08-11 at 17:20 -0400, Daniel F. Savarese
wrote:
> Kevin Smith writes
> :
> >Can someone who has used SVN comment?
> 
> I started reading it and stopped before finishing because the author
> is judging Subversion by using it in a way that doesn''t make any
sense
> for Subversion.  
Fair enough.

Can you confirm that merging between branches within an svn repository
works well? The article implies that it does not.
> Subversion is great for supporting the Apache development model but
> sucks for supporting the Linux kernel development model.
Sounds about right. I think the Linux kernel model is closer to ideal
for most FLOSS projects, including this one. But I think svn is enough
of an improvement to be worth moving to it now, realizing that we will
probably move again later (to something more distributed).

Thanks for the info,

Kevin

Hi,

On Sun, Aug 13, 2006 at 02:01:06PM -0400, Kevin Smith
wrote:
> Can you confirm that merging between branches within an svn repository
> works well? The article implies that it does not.
It does not. SVN does not record ANY meta-information for merges. After
the merge the merge-commit is not distinguishable from any other commit.
Merging repeatedly from one branch to another is kludgy if you forgot
your last "merge-point" (and forgot to note it in your last
merge-commit).

Even the Subversion book admits[1]:
"Ideally, your version control system should prevent the
double-application of changes to a branch. It should automatically
remember which changes a branch has already received, and be able to
list them for you. It should use this information to help automate
merges as much as possible.

Unfortunately, Subversion is not such a system. Like CVS, Subversion
does not yet record any information about merge operations. When you
commit local modifications, the repository has no idea whether those
changes came from running svn merge, or from just hand-editing the
files."

I find that unacceptable for my personal work and only use SVN when I''m
forced to. SVK adds meta-infos about merges and also has an
implementation of tla''s star-merge, but for it to work reliable
everybody doing merges in the repository must use SVK.

Greetings, Tobi

[1]
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.2/svn.branchmerge.copychanges.html#svn.branchmerge.copychanges.bestprac

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