Live data from Hacker News

GitHub Sunsetting Subversion Support

github.blog

131–140 of 238 posts

Re: GitHub Sunsetting Subversion Support

#131

Only partially related, but since they mention it at the bottom of the post: I really like GH's "brownout" approach to discontinuing services. They've done it a couple of times before (like this one[1]), and it's always struck me as a very sensible way to handle deprecations on such a massive service. [1]: https://github.blog/changelog/2021-08-10-brownout-notice-api...

Make sure to get the rate right. Like 1/1,000 or 1/100,000. Poetry did a brownout of its install script at 5% failure. With a matrix of builds user's CI had closer to a 100% chance of failing.

Re: GitHub Sunsetting Subversion Support

#132
post #25

I'd love to hear from someone who's still using SVN professionally and can explain why they prefers it to Git. I used SVN very early in my career. I think the only good thing I can say about it is that it's easier to learn. It's quite easy to teach a junior dev how to use SVN. Git takes much longer to master.

Migrations exist for two reasons:

1) adoption. You're early in the Adoption Curve and you're trying to grease the wheels to make it easier for people to come for you

2) modernization work. You're brought in to consult for a company because someone has declared moral bankruptcy and decided that neutral third parties are more likely to dig them out of the problem. So as a consultant you show up week one and you say, "Dear God, they're still using X?" about five times. So now you're proposing to do migrations that all of your peers finished up seven years ago.

Re: GitHub Sunsetting Subversion Support

#133
post #36

Not sure I’m familiar with any projects using Subversion. I think the most odd-ball version control I’ve seen in prod is SQLite using Fossil (which does seem to have benefits over git) and OpenBSD sticking with CVS.

Apache httpd uses subversion. That's the only example of a well-known project I could find that's not directly related to subversion itself. I'm sure there are others, but all the other ones I could recall have since migrated (usually to git).

Well, I think it is a bit related, being subversion an Apache project: https://subversion.apache.org/

Re: GitHub Sunsetting Subversion Support

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Until nobody believed us. I remember having this problem with Gmail's "1GB for everyone!" April 1 announcement.

I think April 1st should definitely be "Crazy-but-real announcement day". It'll take some attention off the unfunnier-every-year "jokes" which have turned a pleasant and fun yearly occasion into the internet being unusable for ~36 hours.

Lee Valley tools traditionally “announces” a new fake tool on April first, but will sell it if there’s enough interest. Most have been discontinued by now, but one is still available for sale: a blank tape measure so you can make up your own dimensions.

https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop/tools/hand-tools/markin...

Re: GitHub Sunsetting Subversion Support

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of Linus Torvald's Google Tech Talk on Git. https://youtu.be/4XpnKHJAok8 > I see Subversion as being the most pointless project ever started, because the slogan for Subversion for a while was "CVS done right" or something like that and if you start with that kind of slogan, there's nowhere you can go. There is no way to do CVS right.

I mean, he was definitely selling a product there. SVN was pretty good, barring the merge logic being a PITA.

I don't know if he was selling a product. Git is a FOSS utility, after all.

GitHub and others came much later, and have no affiliation with the Git project or Torvalds (some might not know this).

Torvalds created Git for the Linux Kernel folks, and didn't really care if it was used anywhere else.

Torvalds only went about creating Git because BitKeeper and the Kernel folks had a very public falling-out (much to BitKeeper's ultimate misfortune - who even knows about BitKeeper these days). He, and the Kernel folks, were very happy with BitKeeper up until then - and a lot of the BitKeeper features that were unique at the time ended up landing in Git.

This tech talk was because people outside of the Kernel became interested in a similar workflow - namely distributed and "free" branching.

Also, I can't help but marvel... this one person created not only the most prolific Kernel in existence - but also the more prolific VCS. I have a hard time just getting out of bed in the morning...

Re: GitHub Sunsetting Subversion Support

#136

About time... I don't know a single person that still uses it. I can't tell you how many times I got burned doing merges in Subversion where the entire repo became corrupt. Git was a life saver when it came out and I switched immediately over to it.

I do.

I sometimes check out a single directory from a huge repository with enormous history. Since subversion only cares about the latest commit and the directory I'm checking out, it's instantaneous.

Re: GitHub Sunsetting Subversion Support

#137
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it was actually extremely clear that Git would win. It had a guaranteed audience by virtue of hosting the Linux kernel. And forget even about its distributed nature; Git was already better at the centralized model than "centralized-only" version control systems ever were. I think you're forgetting about Mercurial, which was also created by a Linux kernel developer around the same time. It brought all the sa…

Maybe I'm the weird one, but Mercurial never made sense to me. I thought that Git's model made perfect sense. I never tried BitKeeper, so I can't speak to that. But being proprietary seemed to doom it.

I also do not understand why people claim that mercurial is more beginner-friendly. Especially putting relatively basic features into optional modules is very confusing in the beginning.

Re: GitHub Sunsetting Subversion Support

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think April 1st should definitely be "Crazy-but-real announcement day". It'll take some attention off the unfunnier-every-year "jokes" which have turned a pleasant and fun yearly occasion into the internet being unusable for ~36 hours.

You mean the internet being actually lighthearted and fun (like it used to be) for 36 hours?

There is nothing funny or lighthearted about modern-day Internet April Fools. It is too ingrained in ‘social media marketing’ culture at this point. What used to be ‘people having fun’ is now a temporal dumping ground for a bunch of unfunny forced jokes pumped out by soulless marketing teams as some sort of brand awareness exercise.

Bring back Google TISP I say.

Re: GitHub Sunsetting Subversion Support

#139
post #133
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apache httpd uses subversion. That's the only example of a well-known project I could find that's not directly related to subversion itself. I'm sure there are others, but all the other ones I could recall have since migrated (usually to git).

Well, I think it is a bit related, being subversion an Apache project: https://subversion.apache.org/

Many Apache projects use git these days. I looked at some other well-known Apache projects, and they all used git; sometimes on the Apache git servers, sometimes on GitHub. I'm sure there are some others that use subversion, but it's not common.

AFAIK for the most part Apache (the foundation) is fairly hands-off in telling people how to run their Apache project, and every project is mostly free to "do whatever".

Re: GitHub Sunsetting Subversion Support

#140
post #103

Only partially related, but since they mention it at the bottom of the post: I really like GH's "brownout" approach to discontinuing services. They've done it a couple of times before (like this one[1]), and it's always struck me as a very sensible way to handle deprecations on such a massive service. [1]: https://github.blog/changelog/2021-08-10-brownout-notice-api...

These are also known as scream tests. We use them internally at $dayjob as part of EOL'ing APIs. Are they not common?

Lol brown outs is such a nicer name, but I've always known them as a scream test.
Post reply on HN