This is going to sound a bit harsh, but that's the way it goes.
Larry McVoy is wrong.
The core of BitKeeper is an SCCS ripoff. That is, a non-distributed
SCM system. It implemented distributed functionality on that
core.
It's hard to implement a fully distributed SCM system. Of that,
there is no doubt. It's far from straightforward to move from a
typical client/server SCM system to a fully distributed one.
But it's not impossible. Far from it. And in fact, his livelihood is
entirely derived from a system that does exactly that. BitKeeper
itself proves him wrong.
-Mark
On Tuesday 06 August 2002 10:17 am, Alexy Khrabrov wrote:
> In an interview with Larry McVoy, the BitKeeper's founder,
> there's a remark that contrasts BitKeeper with all other VCS's:
>
> [http://www.kerneltrap.org/node.php?id=222]
>
> I will predict that you will never see a centralized system evolve into
> a distributed system. So CVS/Subversion/ClearCase/Perforce/etc will all
> stay with the centralized client/server architecture.
> They may try to replicate distributed systems and it will sort of work,
> but all the corner cases will not work.
> You need to design a distributed system to be distributed from day one.
>
> Is it the feeling of Subversion's founders that Subversion is not truly
> distributed? I thought that the web-based nature of SVN allows for easy
> replication of repositories and multiple repositories, and modular
> architecture allows to manage those locally and add syncing globally in
> any n-way fashion needed.
>
> What exactly can be missing in SVN "from day 1"?
> I'd like to understand if there's a fundamental issue here
> SVN needs to address in order to provide everything BitKeeper
> can eventually.
>
> Cheers,
> Alexy
>
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--
Mark Craig Chu-Carroll, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
*** The Stellation project: Advanced SCM for Collaboration
*** http://www.eclipse.org/stellation
*** Work Email: mcc@watson.ibm.com ------- Personal Email: markcc@bestweb.net
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Received on Tue Aug 6 17:13:37 2002