Re: Switching to Subversion

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:
>> Before considering use of subversion for Emacs I would have to use
>> it for something else, to see what it is like.
>
> IIRC, TeXlive switched to it from a proprietary version control
> system, and they experienced performance and/or bandwidth issues.  Now
> TeXlive is a project with a _vast_ number of small files, probably
> lots more than Emacs.

Another possibility is "git", which is what linux development uses
(it was originally written by Linus Torvalds) -- it's less mature, and
less simple-for-newbies than subversion (git has a much more obvious
"written by hackers" feel to it), but I think it uses a much better
model.  It has _excellent_ support for distributed development and
merging (it's more like arch in that sense, though very different in
others), two areas where subversion is usually considered weak.  Git is
also really, _really_ fast (by almost every measure --
cpu/disk/network), to an almost absurd degree, even on huge source trees
with lots of files (e.g., linux :-).

Git, like subversion, has also been increasingly adopted by FOSS
projects, e.g., Xorg now uses it.  The big downside to git currently
seem to be a somewhat sharp learning curve at the beginning.

[Note, I personally still use arch, but because it doesn't have much
development momentum behind it at this point, I'd be hesitant to
recommend it for a major project.]

-Miles

-- 
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.