David Mankin wrote:
>
> On Sunday, October 13, 2002, at 02:57 PM, Stephan Feder wrote:
>
>> Has anyone thought about implementing a CVS server that uses subversion
>> as backend?
>>
>> Regards,
>> Stephan
>
>
> That's a pretty neat idea. I had earlier suggested the idea of an
> subversion client(-wrapper?) that understood the CVS command line flag
> structure. Then it would be possible that IDEs and other programs
> that already "integrate" with CVS through the CLI would be able to, de
> facto, talk to SVN.
>
> If such a thing existed, then maybe you could use that for ssh access
> instead of ra_pipe. A CVS client could be configured to use rsh/ssh
> access to the CVS-friendly SVN client. That could provide the same
> results as a CVS sever that uses subversion as a backend.
*sigh*
Every one of these ideas has been discussed before.
1. SVN client can connect to CVS server. This requires creating a new
RA layer, call it ra_cvs. It also has a ton of problems:
* How do you simulate the global repository revision?
* How do you map CVS tags and branches into the SVN namespace
* What to do about unimplementable features -- moves, renames,
atomic commits, etc?
2. CVS-like client can connect to a SVN server. To achieve this, you
have to either extend CVS client (eeek, have you looked at the
code?), or write a new server that understands the CVS network
protocol and speaks to the Subversion repository. This is doable
(e.g., by using the Python bindings), but again has some problems
-- in fact, theyre the complement of the problems in (1).
To summarize: yes, it can be done, and it'd be way cool, but it's a huge
amount of work. I've always thought it would make much more sense to put
the effort in a) making cvs2svn really work (e.g.., teach it to
understand tags and branches), and b) get some more Subversion clients
working (Emacs vs-mode integration, a pcl-cvs-like interface, a really
good GUI client, and perhaps integration with IDEs). Do that, and
migration will be much easier.
--
Brane Čibej <brane_at_xbc.nu> http://www.xbc.nu/brane/
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Received on Mon Oct 14 02:22:45 2002