Re: Subversion in 2010

Greg Hudson wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-01-04 at 11:31 -0500, C. Michael Pilato wrote:
> > "To be a compelling replacement for git/Mercurial", perhaps?
>
> That seems tough.

Heh. A vision that's simple to attain is hardly a vision.

What we can usefully do is identify popular features of git/Mercurial
that can usefully be taken alone and that can fit properly into a
Subversion architecture.

> The major architectural differences between
> git/Mercurial/Bazaar and Subversion are:

> * No commitment to mixed-revision working copies.

That sounds interesting, but I haven't got to grips with what it really
means in terms of user work flows, and in what senses it is an important
functional restriction versus an advantage.

> * Full history of at least one branch is generally stored on clients.

I wonder whether full history is logically necessary for the behaviours
desired, or just an implementation choice of the existing DCVSs. We
might be able to design a system that automatically stores a useful and
flexible amount of history locally. It should be usable with a portion
of a huge repository without requiring expert configuration.

> * DVCS workflow support.

We have already discussed some DVCS workflow options at a high level,
and it seems that some important concepts such as "off-line commits"
will be achievable independently. Such concepts might be a bit less
powerful because of not being linked to the full feature set of a DVCS -
but still very useful.

> For small projects and a certain class of developers, these can be huge
> advantages. For huge projects and a different class of developers,
> these can be hindrances.

> (See also http://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2008-04/1020.shtml)

Ah yes, that email (from David Glasser) on the subject of what
Subversion should and could aim for is a good read.

- Julian
Received on 2010-01-06 17:17:36 CET