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Re: Reality check

From: Roy Franz <roy.lists_at_gmail.com>
Date: 2007-12-18 18:47:41 CET

On Dec 18, 2007 5:05 AM, Ben Collins-Sussman <sussman@red-bean.com> wrote:
> On Dec 17, 2007 9:37 PM, Roy Franz <roy.lists@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I personally think that some of these basic usability issues are much
> > more important than offline operation, etc.
>
> The only reason you can answer the question "which tags contain this
> file?" so easily in CVS is because tags are based on labeling files.
> The underlying RCS file has the list of tag-labels right there, ready
> to go. The tradeoff, of course, is that creating tags becomes an O(N)
> operation -- I've seen companies sit and wait for *hours* to make a
> tag on big trees in CVS or Clearcase. So the new design isn't always
> a "very visibile regression in usability", but is more like a game of
> whack-a-mole. Make one thing easier, something else gets harder. :-)
> Though, maybe with a careful redesign, it's possible to whack both
> moles at once...
>
> You might want to read this, as it directly talks about your problem:
>
> http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/notes/schema-tradeoffs.txt
>

I understand the tradeoffs and the underlying implementation, so I
realize that this is
not an easy problem to address. I guess I am a little frustrated that
there doesn't seem to be any interest
in addressing it (or even agreeing that it is a problem.) In our
organization, a small number of people make the tags, but almost
everybody is interested
in asking the 'hard questions' (hard for SVN, easy for CVS) about
tags. This leads to an overall not-so-positive feeling about
Subversion,
as most people see the regressions, while only a few see the gains. I
am surprised that more organizations don't run into the same problem.
This probably isn't a 'sexy' feature (like merge tracking,
disconnected/distributed, etc.), but is a significant usability wart.

Roy

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Received on Tue Dec 18 18:47:59 2007

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