Re: Switching to Subversion

[Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com>]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>>> - Subversion has had more hours (and manhours) devoted to it than the sum of
>>> its competitors, yet it still lacks the most commonly needed tool
>>> (besides what CVS already offers): merge support.
>
>> Doing it right is hard, and probably couldn't be really made in
>> a back-compatible way. I'd expect that for 2.0. And, to be fair, that time
>> has been spent in other ways: alternative backends, three repository
>> access methods, WebDAV/DeltaV, good bindings for third-party tools (look
>> at SVK :), localization, *excellent* documentation, and it is generally
>> rock-solid.
>
> All I really need from a successor to CVS:
> - one backend that works well enough.
> - same access methods as CVS (i.e. ssh/sftp and anonymous).
> - good support for batch-processing (neat bindings via dlls is of no use for
>   Emacs).  Localization can even get in the way here.
> - support for merge.
> - support for file rename.
>
> The first 3 are what CVS already provides.  Svn only added the last point
> and forgot the penultimate (even though it's a lot more important in my
> experience).

Definitely, and that's why the Subversion team is working on it.

  http://subversion.tigris.org/merge-tracking/

Eventually, we'll have that too. In the meantime, while merging is the
same as CVS, at least branching is *much* easier and cleaner.

Subversion has an Emacs interface (both vc-svn.el and psvn.el), native
Windows interface (Tortoise), and an Eclipse interface. The only thing
it is missing is Savannah support.

If you have Subversion experience and a little time, please help get
it running at Savannah:

  https://savannah.gnu.org/maintenance/WhenSvN

Once it is fully supported there, then we can revisit this issue. By
then, hopefully, Richard will have had the opportunity to play with
it. Until then, Richard, the manual is at:

  http://svnbook.red-bean.com/

And you can play, read-only, with the Subversion repository for the MH
book by checking it out with:

  svn co https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/rand-mh/book/trunk mh-book

-- 
Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com>  http://www.newt.com/wohler/  GnuPG ID:610BD9AD