It’s time to stop using Subversion • Hacker News Board

Re: It’s time to stop using Subversion

#11

Post by yuvadam » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 2:46 PM UTC

Do not confuse elitism with minimalism.

Git is simply easier to use, and harder to shoot yourself in the foot with - at least when it comes to the basic flows. (Granted, you can blow your face off with git if you really try hard).

When branching in git is a simple git checkout -b newbranch away as opposed to svn copy http://repo.com/some/path/to/trunk http://repo.com/some/path/to/branches/somenewbranch - then what else is there to say, really?

Sure, svn is extremely easy to setup and use in small teams. But it is simply not geared towards modern development flows.

I appreciate tools that appreciate my time (and sanity) as a developer. And git does just that.

Re: It’s time to stop using Subversion

#12

Post by CountHackulus » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 2:47 PM UTC

spacemanaki wrote: post #5

Aegean wrote: post #2

Very old news.

And yet some of us are stuck using CVS.

Some of us are stuck using Clear Case or Visual Source Safe. Whatever source control you're using, someone always has it worse.

Re: It’s time to stop using Subversion

#13

Post by MindTwister » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 2:48 PM UTC

yellowbkpk wrote: post #6

Having just spent the last month converting our operation to Git here at work, I can tell you the main force in keeping Subversion around are Windows users who are used to TortoiseSVN. There still is no viable Git UI for Windows (or any other OS, really -- but Windows is especially immature) and the people who make decisions a) use Windows and b) "don't have time" to learn git on the command line.

How about TortoiseGit? http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/

Re: It’s time to stop using Subversion

#14

Post by hsmyers » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 2:52 PM UTC

selectnull wrote: post #3

I'm kinda annoyed that every once in a while, somebody has to come along dissing svn, prophesying its inevitable demise and glorifying git. Yes, git is "better" than svn, I agree. I like the message in general, but I don't like the tone of it. I still use svn. For personal project, I have moved to hg. I use git occasionally. They all have its merits, and svn certainly didn't deserve "you should probably stop using it…

It is almost as if there is a law of geek nature that says 'For every evangelist there must be a troll...' It is hard to appreciate the useful content when combined with gratuitous attacks.

Re: It’s time to stop using Subversion

#15

Post by JulianMorrison » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 2:52 PM UTC

Also: .gitignore is fundamentally saner than svn:ignore properties. You can commit it, or not. You can add to it locally without adding it into your next commit. You can make it ignore itself. It applies recursively.

Re: It’s time to stop using Subversion

#16

Post by tghw » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 2:53 PM UTC

MindTwister wrote: post #13

yellowbkpk wrote: post #6

Having just spent the last month converting our operation to Git here at work, I can tell you the main force in keeping Subversion around are Windows users who are used to TortoiseSVN. There still is no viable Git UI for Windows (or any other OS, really -- but Windows is especially immature) and the people who make decisions a) use Windows and b) "don't have time" to learn git on the command line.

How about TortoiseGit? http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/

I tried it a few months ago. I created a new repo and tried to add a file. It gave me an error. So I tried a different way of adding a file. It crashed hard.

TortoiseHg for Mercurial, on the other hand, is a pleasure to work with, especially the 2.0 release that just came out.

Re: It’s time to stop using Subversion

#17

Post by selectnull » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 2:54 PM UTC

CountHackulus wrote: post #12

spacemanaki wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet some of us are stuck using CVS.

Some of us are stuck using Clear Case or Visual Source Safe. Whatever source control you're using, someone always has it worse.

"someone always has it worse."

Unfortunatelly, not in your case. ;)

Re: It’s time to stop using Subversion

#18

Post by btucker » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 2:54 PM UTC

As someone who got started in this field about 10 years ago, I find the mass-adoption of and then mass-exodus from subversion fascinating. I remember sitting in the audience for a talk by Greg Stein introducing subversion at ApacheCon ('02 maybe) and being wow'ed.

I'm trying to think if there's another piece of architecture our industry has both so universally embraced & discarded (hyperbole, I know) in the last decade.

Re: It’s time to stop using Subversion

#19

Post by edabobojr » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 2:57 PM UTC

The big risk I always see with git is that you start storing more and more work locally. This exposes you to the chance of hardware failure on a desktop pc. With svn, it would be easier for the hardware to be redundant and backed-up.

Re: It’s time to stop using Subversion

#20

Post by durin42 » Thu, Mar 10, 2011, 2:58 PM UTC

yuvadam wrote: post #11

Do not confuse elitism with minimalism. Git is simply easier to use, and harder to shoot yourself in the foot with - at least when it comes to the basic flows. (Granted, you can blow your face off with git if you really try hard). When branching in git is a simple git checkout -b newbranch away as opposed to svn copy http://repo.com/some/path/to/trunk http://repo.com/some/path/to/branches/somenewbranch - then what el…

> Git is simply easier to use, and harder to shoot yourself in the foot with - at least when it comes to the basic flows. (Granted, you can blow your face off with git if you really try hard).

I don't know. I've trained a lot of developers with Subverison, Git, and Mercurial. Subversion is the one that I've honestly had the least trouble with, and Git the most. Heck, early on with git I had instances where the repo was so wedged I had to just torch .git and start over. I know more now and can get out of it, but with Subversion I've never* seen a user-facing command that causes Subversion to become mystically wedged and require a new repository for non-advanced users.