Comment from the peanut gallery:
Git has apparently done a fantastic job of 'extending' the standard
diff/patch format with backward-compatible metadata that modern
version control systems need. Mercurial has essentially standardized
around this format as well. (Everyone in the hg world runs 'hg diff
--git' semi-automatically now, and the --git option may soon become
the default.) I hear rumors that bzr is now supporting it too
(kfogel?).
A long, long time ago we had a mailing list in which different SCM
people came together to discuss a "universal format for representing
changesets". The list ended up being a failure, but N years later it
seems like at least the distributed version control world *has*
finally standardized on a common format. If we want subversion to
remain relevant/useful/interoperable for the future, we should
probably strongly consider rewriting this whole feature to use the new
defacto standard.
This is not to trivialize all the work that went in already; but in
hindsight, it may not be the best overall product strategy. And if
we're busy questioning whether the existing code is even maintainable,
all the more reason to consider a fresh start on this problem.
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Received on 2009-08-29 02:47:20 CEST