[Phpwm] CVS or Subversion?

[Rob Allen]

sparkes wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Feb 2006 16:25:24 -0000
> "Peter Graham" <Peter.Graham at tcat.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
>>  
>> "The main advantage of CVS is that they're plugins for just about
>> everything to interface with it, which makes life less hassle some"
>>
> 
> your friend is living in the 90's ;-)
> 
> SVN added the features needed by CVS (such as renaming files) and
> wrapped it all in an interface that is so similar to CVS existing users
> can migrate with little trouble.

I suppose that I'd better chime in with a minor disagreement :)

SVN's big advantage is that it's much much better at handling meta data 
changes. i.e. moving files, renaming them etc. If you are going to 
reorganise your files, then this is a god-send! It also handles binary 
files better.

Another nice thing is that all the commands are basically identical to 
CVS, so if you know one, you know the other.


SVN has some (relatively minor) disadvantages for me that may or may not 
be an issue to you:

1. No $CVSROOT environment variable used by default. You have to specify 
the full path to the repository every time you do a co. If you use lots 
of branches, this is a pain. Obviously, you can set up a manual $SVNROOT 
and pass it in to cvs commands though.

2. Like CVS multiple merges from a branch require that you keep track of 
the revision you last merged in the commit message. With CVS, you just 
tag and reference the tag in the -j argument. With SVN you have to store 
the revision number in a commit message and go look it up when you need 
it...

3. A "tag" is a branch. Therefore you have to be disciplined never to 
commit to a tag. Conceptually you wouldn't expect that this would be an 
issue, but even the EZ guys had this problem with their ez components 
package when someone accidentally committed to a tag directory...

Other than that, I don't think it makes much odds to be honest. If I was 
starting a brand new project, I'd probably use SVN, but I see no 
advantage to moving any of my current stuff from CVS.

Rob...