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Simple Revision Control

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Re: Simple Revision Control

#91

Post by dzsekijo »

I don't get how git (or any proper multi-file dvcs) falls behind facilitating the purpose ESR is shooting at. You can use "git log " to track changes of .

It's like Gmail drafts. While it's delivered to you as an email stashing feature, I realized that it's the best cloud-based (offline-synced, omnipresent) note application. It can do that even if "note" is not in its name. We can be creative about using the tools at our disposal.

Besides (back to the original problem), it can be handy sometimes that you have a tool that can operate over the whole range of managed files, even if they are logically unrelated.

Re: Simple Revision Control

#92

Post by fetbaffe »

icebraining wrote: post #88
fetbaffe wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, the world does not consists of two opposing positions, like republicans or democrats. There could actually be other positions than those two you pointed out. One for example that this is Hacker News and not Huffington Post. Your comment about "support him by using his software" is just silly. Lots of creators in this world have had less than flattering opinions in different topics, but does not take away wh…

In general, I agree. The question is whether you're helping promote the "bad parts" by promoting the good ones. I mean, why are we reading and discussing ERS's views on Catholic priests if not because many people like his software? I don't think it's fair to dismiss it as silly.

But by your definition you are already promoting other peoples opinions by using their stuff. It is unavoidable.

The only difference is that you don't care about those opinions because either you don't know about them or you don't think it is important. But they still exist.

Re: Simple Revision Control

#93

Post by angersock »

tptacek wrote: post #70
Karunamon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow.. classy guy. That said, people can change. 12 years is a long time.. does he still think that way?

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1063

Because (and here I make the first and only value claim in this essay) whatever one’s opinion of homophilic homosexuals might be, the behaviors associated with the pederastic/dominating classical style are entangled with abuse and degradation in a way that can only be described as evil. Modern homosexuals deserve praise for their attempt to get shut of them.

If you disagree with the reasoning prior to that or that his facts are wrong (which is entirely possible), then yeah, he's full of shit. That said, he does compliment "modern homosexuals" in contrast to what he claims came before.

It's uncomfortable reading, but I don't exactly see him advocating dragging anyone behind a truck.

Re: Simple Revision Control

#94

Post by crazygringo »

dzsekijo wrote: post #91

I don't get how git (or any proper multi-file dvcs) falls behind facilitating the purpose ESR is shooting at. You can use "git log " to track changes of . It's like Gmail drafts. While it's delivered to you as an email stashing feature, I realized that it's the best cloud-based (offline-synced, omnipresent) note application. It can do that even if "note" is not in its name. We can be creative about using the tools at…

I don't know about this tool, but git does not make it easy to move files from one repository to another, for instance, and maintain that file's history.

Heck, I'd like to be able to e-mail a single file to someone, and have the file keep its revision history. File-based revision histories, as opposed to repository-based, have a whole host of advantages that come from flexibility.

Re: Simple Revision Control

#95

Post by npsimons »

muyuu wrote: post #31
awalton wrote: post #26

I think in a strange way, this tool is actually not a terrible idea. Git is not a configuration management tool, no matter how hard people try to shoe-horn it into that role. A simpler Git designed for configuration management is indeed a good idea. Unfortunately, I think the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. For one, not including the committer is an important flaw. If you're only managing your own system's…

It's actually a good idea. People often don't bother version-controlling simple stuff because it's a hassle. I routinely use my own rdiff/rsync scripts but this is not something you find in every system and also not something most people would use. A barebones, simple, no-install, easy, not-necessarily-for-experienced-developers VCS is a good thing to have. BTW it's going at 1 release per day. Heh :-)

It's actually a good idea. People often don't bother version-controlling simple stuff because it's a hassle.

Here's the thing that's funny to me: git is easy. Everyone (especially mercurial users) goes on about how horrible the UI is, but when I think of git, I think of how similar it is to RCS: easy, quick, and simple. With both, I can diff things and check in changes very quickly. I have a bunch of single files in RCS which I'm moving over to git because it's a no brainer: all the speed and ease of use with a ton of advantages (such as dead simple replication) if I ever need them.

Re: Simple Revision Control

#96

Post by plikan13 »

icebraining wrote: post #82
edwintorok wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People can have different political, religious, etc. views than you, but why should that influence whether you use his software or not? Do you check the political views of all authors of each software before you decide to use it? What if those views (or your own) change over time and you disagree with them?

(ESR aside) Why not? If I believe that someone's exposed views are harmful, doesn't it make sense to avoid increasing his/her overall influence? I mean, the fact that we're discussing ESR's views on pedophilia shows that his influence in an unrelated area (software) increases the exposure of those views. If he was just a nobody like me, would we be discussing his blog post on Catholic priests? Not likely. Do you chec…

Why not respond to bigotry with love, instead of hating back? This is not some zero-sum game. If anyone needs a little bit of success in life, it's a bigot.

Re: Simple Revision Control

#97

Post by icebraining »

edwintorok wrote: post #85
icebraining wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(ESR aside) Why not? If I believe that someone's exposed views are harmful, doesn't it make sense to avoid increasing his/her overall influence? I mean, the fact that we're discussing ESR's views on pedophilia shows that his influence in an unrelated area (software) increases the exposure of those views. If he was just a nobody like me, would we be discussing his blog post on Catholic priests? Not likely. Do you chec…

First of all it would take too much time to find out all the authors of all the software that I routinely use, and then keep up with what their current views are on various topics. But I think the main reason is that most software has more than one author, and it would be unfair to judge the usefulness of that software based on the (non-technical) views of just one of its authors. Your reasoning would apply only for…

Your reasoning would apply only for single-author software

But doesn't that fit SRC itself?

But again for me those are all technical reasons, I wouldn't factor an author's/company's political views into that decision, unless it was something really horrible.

Ah! But then you're not arguing whether it makes sense to factor the political views in the decision - what you're actually arguing is that ESR's views are not really horrible.

But since pothibo supposedly considers them really horrible, it makes sense that (s)he would factor in those views, no?

Re: Simple Revision Control

#98

Post by jxf »

dzsekijo wrote: post #91

I don't get how git (or any proper multi-file dvcs) falls behind facilitating the purpose ESR is shooting at. You can use "git log " to track changes of . It's like Gmail drafts. While it's delivered to you as an email stashing feature, I realized that it's the best cloud-based (offline-synced, omnipresent) note application. It can do that even if "note" is not in its name. We can be creative about using the tools at…

Here's a very obvious use-case: You have a single file with many historical changes. That file moves to a new directory that is not a subdirectory of its current directory.

In git, the file vanishes from the repo and can't be tracked easily anymore. You lose all of its past history if you put it into a new repo. In SRC the history moves with the file.

Re: Simple Revision Control

#99

Post by jordigh »

dzsekijo wrote: post #91

I don't get how git (or any proper multi-file dvcs) falls behind facilitating the purpose ESR is shooting at. You can use "git log " to track changes of . It's like Gmail drafts. While it's delivered to you as an email stashing feature, I realized that it's the best cloud-based (offline-synced, omnipresent) note application. It can do that even if "note" is not in its name. We can be creative about using the tools at…

What if you'd like to track files at your filesystem root? /.git would be a tad complicated, since you'd need fairly complicated .gitignore rules, right? You wouldn't want "git status" or "git diff" to read your entire filesystem, including all mounted devices.

Re: Simple Revision Control

#100

Post by bryanlarsen »

e12e wrote: post #46
mrb wrote: post #22

He claims he did not use Mercurial because (a) it stores the history in binary blobs, (b) it does not have sequential revision numbers, and (c) its CLI syntax is ugly, see [1]. Unfortunately he is wrong about (b) and (c). Mercurial assigns automatic sequential revision numbers (perfect for a single non-distributed repo) and its CLI syntax is so neat that this is the reason I do use it a lot to track changes to single…

I'm nit particularly fond of git, I much prefer mercurial - but they are of course pretty much equivalent. Either way I have a hard time seeing which usecases aren't covered by the duo of RCS and mercurial (actually I'm very hard pressed to see why one would ever use RCS over mercurial, but no question RCS is simpler). At least something like fossil have some actually unique features....

That was ESR's conclusion as well. SRC is just a simple wrapper around RCS.
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