Tom Lord <lord@regexps.com> writes:
> > But Subversion can't afford a drastic redesign.
>
> First, saying "drastic" makes a presumption that may very well turn
> out to be false. I don't see how either of us can tell how far this
> would take you off your current path unless we actually think it
> through.
Let me address this --
We've been working on svn for over two years now, and we *have* taken
notice of other scm systems along the way. We've not been driving
with blinders on. We've read about the philosophy behind Bitkeeper,
Perforce, Clearcase, and other systems. We have a general grasp of
their designs, and a *very* good idea of how radically different they
are from the CVS Design that we're seeking to perfect.
So when you ask us to "stop and re-evaluate, and try to imagine what
the perfect scm system would be", it's pretty obvious to us (or to me,
at least) that such a system would be *nothing* at all like CVS or
Subversion. Based on my experience, I don't believe that the CVS
model is even close.
That's why it's so easy for me to state this opinion: switching our
goal to "design a perfect system" is essentially equivalent to tossing
all of Subversion out the window.
So I don't think it's going to be easy to persuade people here to just
"stop coding and discuss scope". But I *do* admire your goal. I hope
you're able to form a consortium/discussion group/whatever, and that
this team designs a new generation of tools, as well as a patch
format. But it needs to happen in parallel with svn, not in serial.
If the consortium comes up with a new set of 'standard' scm semantics,
or a new 'standard' patch format, then svn can grow to incorporate
that standard. And hopefully many svn developers will participate in
such a forum... but please don't expect the forum to halt svn in its
tracks. That's just not realistic.
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Received on Thu Oct 10 23:31:48 2002