Karl Fogel <kfogel@newton.ch.collab.net> writes:
>
> Greg Stein <gstein@lyra.org> writes:
> > In any case: get out of the "source code" mindset. Think about other kinds
> > of documents. Locking is required for almost any non-mergable file format.
> > Karl likes to say "but communication solves all that". It sure
> > does, but the amount of communication necessary is hella more
> > painful than a flag bit.
>
> No, that's *not* what Karl likes to say :-).
Sorry, I could clarify this better:
Greg, I think you heard me say once that "communication solves this
problem" and you assumed I meant things like emailing back and forth,
phone calls, smoke signals, and the like.
I didn't. That stuff is awful, and of course we can do better.
I meant that Subversion itself should provide the communication
mechanism, because it can do a much better job than email, phones, and
smoke puffs. And if it does provide that mechanism, it has solved the
same problems that locking solves, but without getting in people's way
as much as locking.
By "better", I mean specificially that Subversion can store and
deliver messages about who wants to exclusively work on what, and
deliver them in a timely fashion, because everyone's already using the
revision control system to get information about the files. They're
not using their mailreaders or telephones to update their files --
that's why it's a pain to use those channels to obtain locking
information.
So when I say "it's about communication", I don't mean the usual
generic thing ("Developers should talk to each other" and all that).
I mean something technical that we can provide.
-K
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Received on Mon Aug 5 19:28:09 2002