Tom Lord <lord@regexps.com> writes:
> I propose an intense and focused goal and design review, and goal and
> design restatement, encompassing both of our projects, and looking
> beyond them to the other tools in a software engineering tool-chain. I
> think that now is a good time for us all to step back, take stock of
> what we have and what we need, and to make a solid plan for execution
> moving forward.
Ahhh. Okay, I see what you're driving at.
I agree with your observations about the scope of the general revision
control problem. But Subversion can't afford a drastic redesign. We
decided early on about the problem we were solving -- replacing CVS --
and the software is targeted squarely at that problem. I'm betting we
can add changeset functionality, but not via a complete redesign;
instead, we will have to find ways to do it incrementally, without
significantly delaying upcoming milestones. A complete rescoping at
this point would be insanity, from a project management point of view.
If you still think you can help, given the above, then great! But
we'll understand if you feel it's impossible.
Note, of course, that this isn't really about what Subversion can
withstand, it's about what people can withstand. I'm pretty sure the
current developers are in agreement that we're not going to rescope
now. So fine, this particular group of people is not prepared to
start redesigning Subversion. But if *you* think Subversion could be
redesigned to replace BitKeeper and still brought to a releaseable
state before the heat death of the universe, and you can find
developers who agree with you, go for it. I can't persuade myself
that it would work, so I'm not going to join that effort, however.
The recent BitKeeper license changes doesn't affect any of this, btw.
BitKeeper wasn't Free before, and it isn't Free now. So there's as
much need for a truly free tool that solves "The BitKeeper Problem"
today as there was yesterday. Maybe someday that tool will exist, and
maybe Arch or Subversion will be part of it.
-K
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Received on Thu Oct 10 22:31:09 2002