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Re: Reality check

From: Steven Bakke <steven.bakke_at_amd.com>
Date: 2007-12-18 20:38:21 CET

On Dec 18, 2007, at 12:47 PM, Roy Franz wrote:

> On Dec 18, 2007 5:05 AM, Ben Collins-Sussman <sussman@red-bean.com>
> wrote:
>> On Dec 17, 2007 9:37 PM, Roy Franz <roy.lists@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I personally think that some of these basic usability issues are
>>> much
>>> more important than offline operation, etc.
>>
>> The only reason you can answer the question "which tags contain this
>> file?" so easily in CVS is because tags are based on labeling files.
>> The underlying RCS file has the list of tag-labels right there, ready
>> to go. The tradeoff, of course, is that creating tags becomes an
>> O(N)
>> operation -- I've seen companies sit and wait for *hours* to make a
>> tag on big trees in CVS or Clearcase. So the new design isn't
>> always
>> a "very visibile regression in usability", but is more like a game of
>> whack-a-mole. Make one thing easier, something else gets
>> harder. :-)
>> Though, maybe with a careful redesign, it's possible to whack both
>> moles at once...
>>
>> You might want to read this, as it directly talks about your problem:
>>
>> http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/notes/schema-tradeoffs.txt
>>
>
> I understand the tradeoffs and the underlying implementation, so I
> realize that this is
> not an easy problem to address. I guess I am a little frustrated that
> there doesn't seem to be any interest
> in addressing it (or even agreeing that it is a problem.) In our

I'll second that. I think one issue is getting acknowledgement that
"tags as labels" are
a valid use-case which is only partially addressed by "tags as cheap
copies". It
is not really a replacement. Based upon the number of times this
issue has come
up in the users mailing list, there seems to be demand for this
capability.

> organization, a small number of people make the tags, but almost
> everybody is interested
> in asking the 'hard questions' (hard for SVN, easy for CVS) about
> tags. This leads to an overall not-so-positive feeling about
> Subversion,
> as most people see the regressions, while only a few see the gains. I
> am surprised that more organizations don't run into the same problem.
> This probably isn't a 'sexy' feature (like merge tracking,
> disconnected/distributed, etc.), but is a significant usability wart.
>
> Roy

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Received on Tue Dec 18 20:41:36 2007

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