Re: What a modern collaboration toolkit looks like

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
>> Date: Sat, 05 Jan 2008 09:55:57 +0100
>> Cc: tassilo@member.fsf.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org, Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>
>> 
>> >    	  CVS           GIT
>> > 	  save file  =  commit
>> 
>> No.  Saving a file will not give you all the version control history and
>> tools and diffs and branching and other tools that committing does under
>> git.
>
> What tools and diffs are those?  So far, AFAIU, the only difference
> between save-file and GIT commit is that with the latter, you can
> start a (local) branch.  If there are other reasons for local commits,
> what are they?

Being able to start a local branch at the drop of a hat is actually very
very valuable.  Anyway: You can diff between any committed versions.
You can revert particular commits.  You can checkout any previous
version by date or version.  Branching is actually quite important since
you can work on several unfinished projects at once, deciding for
yourself when and how you merge in upstream changes to keep your branch
abreast.  You can make a bloody mess of your repository and back out
again (it is actually rather hard to really lose any history with git)
without anybody else noticing.  You can merge in a particular patch set
from somebody else.

If you notice a regression, you can create a test case for it and let
git automatically biject from your local branch history until it
pinpoints what commit has been responsible for the regression.

Once you think you have reached a good state of your local branch, you
can clean up and merge and reorder the commits into sensible order, and
then push or offer them as a coherent, well-organized set of commits (so
there is no need for something like a ChangeLog cleanup) on top of some
externally available branch.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum