Re: UNS: Re: Subversion Doesn't Have Branches aka Crossing the Streams aka Branches as First Class Objects?

On Mon, 13 May 2013 11:32:13 +0000, Les Mikesell wrote:
...
> Maybe it is just my misconception, but I've always thought of the
> difference between svn and git as being that svn conceptually tracks
> complete revisions although sometimes it might generate or store
> differences for some operations or internal storage convenience, where
> git tracks changesets although it often has to generate complete
> revisions.

That indeed is just a misconception. git even goes to define exactly
how each commit (aka revision) is stored including its checksum.
This even though is it then going to internally store that in
a dense packfile format.

> The nature of branches seems to relate better to

No, the basic difference is that VCS operating on the whole tree can
only have branches (and thus merge info) on the whole tree either, so
you *can't* go like subversion does and map branches into the tree and
need to have them (and tags) as a separate concept.

SVN, instead of having branches as a separate concept, also stores whole
trees, but instead additionally stores 'this came from there' or 'that
was merged here' as a separate concept.

Andreas

-- 
"Totally trivial. Famous last words."
From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@*.org>
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 07:29:21 -0800