[Gllug] CVS

[Dave Cridland]

On Mon, 2002-09-23 at 10:13, Tethys wrote:
> 
> >Improved handling of binaries is something most of the touted
> >replacements for cvs aim for (though basic things like cleanly handling
> >renamed files and directories are more important, imo).
> 
> Curious. I've never found either of these to be particularly problematic.
> I rarely use CVS for binary files, and the renaming issue is annoying
> but not critical. For me the biggest failing of CVS is its file oriented
> (as opposed to changeset oriented) nature.

I've used CVS for binaries, and just find it a bit of a gotcha to start
with, but nothing too problematic.

The file renaming/copying thing is a pain, though - partly because I'm
never too disciplined when starting a new file - I tend to move C++
classes into separate files as and when they get "big" enough, and
sometimes move them from inlined to a proper header/implementation
structure when I suddenly realise I need them in multiple places.

Subversion handles this quite neatly, by implementing branching as "svn
mv", and tagging as "svn cp". This allows me to "branch" a file in the
same working directory, forking the history there and then.

Changesets work in a sense - files and directories are both versioned,
but only in as much as the entire repository is versioned. If you look
at the subversion developer's mailing list, you'll see plenty of
references to a specific repository version, which is all anyone needs
to know to replicate the source tree used for building. Tags aren't
therefore used all that much.

Branches and tags, in the CVS sense, both turn into just another
directory in the repository - a "tag" is just a "branch" that nobody's
committed changes to.

My only pain with subversion is that it's a bit of a git to get going
with, being a comparitively early project, and highly dependent on the
CVS version of APR, for instance.

It's basically fun. And it's also rapidly stabilising. I've used both
CVS and Subversion plenty, and so far I infinitely prefer Subversion.

Dave.


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