[Rails] SCM for a Rails project - Darcs or Subversion?

Alder Green
Thu, 20 Apr 2006 16:53:59 -0000

On 4/20/06, Chris McGrath <chris@octopod.info>
wrote:
>
> On 20 Apr 2006, at 16:15, Alder Green wrote:
>
> > On 4/20/06, Chris McGrath <chris@octopod.info> wrote:
> >> (...)
> >> [1] Is an interesting read.
> >> (...)
> >> [1] http://blog.caboo.se/articles/2006/01/27/darcs-for-rails-users
> >
> > Yes, it is. It''s also the only text I manged to find about
using Darcs
> > with Rails. There are a few others, discussing deployment issues with
> > Darcs compared to smoother operation with SVN. So not very
> > encouraging.
>
> Different from the problems on the other articles I mentioned? If so
> can you give me URLs as quick google didn''t turn up much for me.

Actually I was refering to the same articles you quoted: one short
introduction (well, more like a teaser :), and two troubleshooting
posts.

> > The Rails wiki has several detailed treatments of SVN Rails
> > development and deployment. Many other texts exist, some going into
> > quite a bit of detail, like for example [1].
>
> That''s a nice article, and could be translated to darcs, which
I''d do
> if I had more time.

Yeah, knowing all the gotchas in advance would be nice. Maybe I''ll
find the time to write it after I experience all of them myself :)

> > With so little information available online (and afai could determine:
> > also offline), I had to try to get a sense of how many developers
> > actually use Darcs to manage their Rails code, and a rough estimate of
> > the overhead it incurs compared to the better-supported SVN, assuming
> > I don''t use RadRails and probably won''t need
SwitchTower or
> > Capistrano.
>
> I know a few who do, but most run svn, especially if they have public
> code. Guess it''s whatever you feel most comfortable with.
I''m not
> sure what you mean by overhead mind you.

Not sure either :)  I understand Rails on principle (MVC, basic
concepts and MO), but actually developing a complex Rails application
is still a mystery for me. I figured if everyone is flocking to SVN
(when we all know how much simpler and subtly powerful Darcs is ;)
there must be a good reason...

> If you''re deploying to unix I''d *really* *really*
recommend checking
> out Capistrano, I can''t imagine using anything else now!

Sounds like I really need to check it out :) (deploying to a Debian
Stable server).

> Cheers,
>
> Chris

Thanks a lot, Chris.

-Alder