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Show HN: BitKeeper – Enterprise-ready version control, now open-source

bitkeeper.org

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Re: Show HN: BitKeeper – Enterprise-ready version control, now open-source

#11

Post by luckydude »

desdiv wrote: post #8
adrianN wrote: post #5

Why would I want to use this over git or mercurial?

You wouldn't, unless you have very specific niche needs. They're pretty upfront about it: >Why use BitKeeper when there are lots of great alternatives? >For many projects, the answer is: you shouldn’t. https://www.bitkeeper.org/why.html

Probably the single biggest reason, aside from it's easier to use than git's CLI, is that it has sub-modules that work exactly like files do in a repository. No extra options, just clone/pull/push/commit/etc. Full on distributed workflow.

BitKeeper itself is a collection of repositories. Download an install image, install, and clone it:

    $ bk clone http://bkbits.net/u/bk/bugfix
    $ cd bugfix
    $ bk here
    PRODUCT
    default
    $ bk comps -m
    ./src/gui/tcltk/bwidget
    ./src/gui/tcltk/tcl
    ./src/gui/tcltk/tk
    ./src/gui/tcltk/tkcon
    ./src/gui/tcltk/tktable
    ./src/gui/tcltk/tktreectrl
    ./src/win32/dll/scc
    ./src/win32/dll/shellx
    ./src/win32/dll/shellx/src
    ./src/win32/msys
    ./src/win32/vss2bk
which shows that what we clone by default doesn't include all that other crud (we cache the build result from that and populate it as needed to do builds).

Play with it, it's very different from Git, the subrepo binding is just like file bindings. Everything works together and obeys the same timeline.

Re: Show HN: BitKeeper – Enterprise-ready version control, now open-source

#15

Post by luckydude »

PuercoPop wrote: post #13

Something I'm wondering and the man page doesn't clear, does it track files across renames or does it only track content like git?

It tracks renames, it's not like git. Every file has an internal identifier, that's the actual file id, the name is a versioned attribute of the file.

Re: Show HN: BitKeeper – Enterprise-ready version control, now open-source

#17

Post by gadders »

dsr_ wrote: post #9

For people who don't know the history -- McVoy offered free bitkeeper licenses to various open source projects, and the Linux kernel switched to it. After Andrew Tridgell (SAMBA, among other projects) reverse-engineered the bitkeeper protocol [1] in order to create his own client, the license was rescinded for everyone. As a result, Linus wrote git. [1] https://lwn.net/Articles/132938/

As I remember it, it was a bit of a douche move by Tridgell, driven by a Stallman-like free software ideology.

Re: Show HN: BitKeeper – Enterprise-ready version control, now open-source

#19

Post by wscott »

loeg wrote: post #16

Interesting — FreeBSD 7 and 8 binaries available for download. Neither of those is a current supported release. It's like offering RHEL 3 or 4 binaries.

We found that by maintaining a build cluster with many old releases we tend to keep compatibility issues out of the code. Also, FreeBSD is very good about backwards compatibility so current releases will run these binaries just fine.

However we will update the build targets as needed by users.

Re: Show HN: BitKeeper – Enterprise-ready version control, now open-source

#20

Post by striking »

gadders wrote: post #17
dsr_ wrote: post #9

For people who don't know the history -- McVoy offered free bitkeeper licenses to various open source projects, and the Linux kernel switched to it. After Andrew Tridgell (SAMBA, among other projects) reverse-engineered the bitkeeper protocol [1] in order to create his own client, the license was rescinded for everyone. As a result, Linus wrote git. [1] https://lwn.net/Articles/132938/

As I remember it, it was a bit of a douche move by Tridgell, driven by a Stallman-like free software ideology.

Here's an article about that: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/14/torvalds_attacks_tri...
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