From: Ludovic Brenta <ludovic.brenta@insalien.org>
Subject: Re: SourceForge, CVS and revision control systems (was: GWindows and David Botton)
Date: Tue, 05 Oct 2004 22:27:01 +0200
Date: 2004-10-05T22:30:34+02:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87mzz0oqqy.fsf_-_@insalien.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: uk6u53rxi.fsf@obry.org
Pascal Obry writes:
> Ludovic Brenta writes:
>
>> Well, I have mixed feelings about this. Despite its known and
>> annoying flaws, CVS was popular when SourceForge was established.
>> SourceForge chose to support CVS for its simplicity. Now, the
>> popularity of SourceForge makes CVS popular, but the deficiencies
>> in CVS are still there.
>
> That's wrong! CVS has always been very popular AFAIK. It has
> superceded RCS and SCCS long time ago. I agree that CVS is not the
> best version control system around but it is quite good, and it is
> good enough for some very large projects !
If you think that the deficiencies in CVS are not serious, think
again. No atomic commits, no recording of merges, no versioning of
directory structure, no replication, poor scalability (in terms of
performance) come to mind.
I agree that CVS is "good enough", and I am aware that some very large
projects use it succesfully. But that is not my point. My point is
twofold:
- CVS has known flaws. These are design, not implementation flaws and
only a redesign can fix them. There are several projects with the
stated purpose to replace CVS with better designs. To illustrate:
the name "subversion" is not an accident.
- SourceForge helps maintain or even increase the popularity of CVS
despite its known deficiencies.
The main reasons why CVS is still so popular despite its problems and
the concerted efforts by some groups to replace it are the installed
base, inertia (especially of large projects, by their very nature),
and its simplicity.
The large projects that use CVS do so at the cost of extra work on the
part of the developers. For example, CVS does not help prevent
multiple merges of the same changes into a branch. A skilled release
manager is required to perform this function manually, when it could
be performed automatically and reliably by the tool.
The parallel with the C programming language is quite obvious to me.
C replaced assembler a long time ago, and it is still being used
massively despite its known problems.
The large projects that use C do so at the cost of extra work on the
part of developers. For example, C does not help prevent buffer
overflows. A skilled programmer is required to perform this function
manually, when it could be performed automatically and reliably by the
compiler.
--
Ludovic Brenta.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2004-10-05 20:27 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 110+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2004-09-23 1:44 GWindows and David Botton Fionn mac Cuimhaill
2004-09-23 2:51 ` stephane richard
2004-09-24 1:08 ` Stephen Leake
2004-09-24 1:14 ` stephane richard
2004-09-24 16:26 ` Matthew Heaney
2004-09-25 12:19 ` Stephen Leake
2004-09-26 13:22 ` Craig Carey
2004-09-24 0:35 ` Stephen Leake
2004-09-24 3:38 ` Randy Brukardt
2004-09-24 5:41 ` Martin Dowie
2004-09-24 10:37 ` stephane richard
2004-09-25 12:06 ` Stephen Leake
2004-09-27 20:59 ` Randy Brukardt
2004-09-28 17:47 ` Pascal Obry
2004-09-28 18:25 ` stephane richard
2004-10-03 17:04 ` David Botton
2004-10-03 16:32 ` David Botton
2004-10-03 17:59 ` Marius Amado Alves
2004-10-03 19:32 ` Ludovic Brenta
2004-10-03 20:21 ` Jerry van Dijk
2004-10-04 19:13 ` tmoran
2004-10-05 0:54 ` David Botton
2004-10-05 1:23 ` David Botton
2004-10-05 1:27 ` Stephen Leake
2004-10-05 3:39 ` David Botton
2004-10-05 23:20 ` Randy Brukardt
2004-10-03 19:24 ` Jerry van Dijk
2004-10-04 2:06 ` Stephen Leake
2004-10-04 13:23 ` David Botton
2004-10-04 13:43 ` David Botton
2004-09-24 17:00 ` Cesar Rabak
2004-09-24 5:45 ` Fionn mac Cuimhaill
2004-09-24 22:14 ` String handling and character encodings Björn Persson
2004-09-25 12:01 ` GWindows and David Botton Stephen Leake
2004-09-26 16:21 ` Fionn mac Cuimhaill
2004-10-03 16:37 ` David Botton
2004-09-26 21:57 ` Stephen McNeill
2004-09-26 22:08 ` tmoran
2004-09-27 6:13 ` Fionn mac Cuimhaill
2004-09-27 7:30 ` GWindows license (Was: GWindows and David Botton) Jacob Sparre Andersen
2004-09-27 12:31 ` GWindows and David Botton Georg Bauhaus
2004-09-27 21:23 ` Stephen McNeill
2004-10-03 16:40 ` David Botton
2004-10-04 1:57 ` Stephen Leake
2004-10-04 13:31 ` David Botton
2004-10-05 0:54 ` Stephen Leake
2004-10-05 15:39 ` David Botton
2004-10-05 19:44 ` tmoran
2004-10-05 21:33 ` David Botton
2004-10-05 22:13 ` stephane richard
2004-10-06 21:17 ` tmoran
2004-10-05 22:40 ` Stephen Leake
2004-10-05 23:28 ` Randy Brukardt
2004-10-06 3:50 ` David Botton
2004-10-06 3:46 ` David Botton
[not found] ` <ullenfdo8.fsf@acm.org>
2004-10-04 12:46 ` Stephen Leake
2004-10-04 23:13 ` Brian May
2004-10-04 23:45 ` stephane richard
2004-10-05 17:52 ` Ludovic Brenta
2004-10-05 18:08 ` Chris Humphries
2004-10-05 18:24 ` Ludovic Brenta
2004-10-05 19:07 ` Pascal Obry
2004-10-05 20:27 ` Ludovic Brenta [this message]
2004-10-05 20:54 ` SourceForge, CVS and revision control systems (was: GWindows and David Botton) Pascal Obry
2004-10-05 22:43 ` GWindows and David Botton Stephen Leake
2004-10-07 18:49 ` Ludovic Brenta
2004-10-16 2:36 ` Benjamin Ketcham
2004-10-16 13:22 ` CVS front-ends Stephen Leake
2004-10-16 14:33 ` Matthew Heaney
2004-10-16 15:07 ` Pascal Obry
2004-10-16 15:56 ` Stephen Leake
2004-10-16 16:37 ` Pascal Obry
2004-10-19 2:48 ` GWindows and David Botton Kaz Kylheku
2004-10-05 0:48 ` Stephen Leake
2004-10-05 7:42 ` Brian May
2004-10-05 22:16 ` Stephen Leake
2004-10-06 8:48 ` Pascal Obry
2004-10-06 18:56 ` Marius Amado Alves
2004-10-06 20:07 ` David Botton
2004-10-06 20:18 ` David Botton
2004-10-06 21:25 ` tmoran
2004-10-09 9:49 ` Jerry van Dijk
2004-10-07 0:22 ` Stephen Leake
2004-10-08 0:28 ` Brian May
2004-10-06 20:08 ` Samuel Tardieu
2004-10-08 0:36 ` Brian May
2004-09-24 18:58 ` Pascal Obry
2004-09-24 20:14 ` Marius Amado Alves
2004-09-24 20:48 ` tmoran
2004-09-24 22:20 ` GTK Björn Persson
2004-09-24 22:22 ` GWindows and David Botton Georg Bauhaus
2004-09-25 2:34 ` Jeff C r e e.m
2004-09-25 6:03 ` Pascal Obry
2004-09-25 10:42 ` Marius Amado Alves
2004-09-25 11:38 ` Georg Bauhaus
2004-09-25 13:11 ` Ed Falis
2004-09-25 15:59 ` Jacob Sparre Andersen
2004-09-25 18:15 ` Ed Falis
[not found] ` <41554B8F.6040401@netcabo.pt>
2004-09-25 12:49 ` Stephen Leake
[not found] ` <uekkqfr96.fsf@acm.org>
2004-09-25 13:05 ` Marius Amado Alves
2004-09-25 11:46 ` Ludovic Brenta
2004-09-25 12:43 ` GtkAda vs Windex, Gwindows Stephen Leake
2004-10-04 17:11 ` Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
2004-10-04 21:11 ` Ludovic Brenta
2004-10-05 16:38 ` GtkAda Package Hierarchy (was ...vs Windex, Gwindows) Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
2004-10-05 16:56 ` GtkAda vs Windex, Gwindows Stephane Riviere
2004-10-05 17:09 ` stephane richard
2004-10-05 20:42 ` Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
2004-10-03 16:18 ` GWindows and David Botton David Botton
2004-10-03 16:03 ` David Botton
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