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From CVS to Git, thirty years of source control

evilgeniuslabs.ca

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Re: From CVS to Git, thirty years of source control

#51

Post by gpvos »

sgbeal wrote: post #47
gpvos wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but the site is called Evil Genius Labs for a reason. And it's not too hard to switch off, there's a clear prompt in the bottom right corner. (Didn't try mobile.)

> ... there's a clear prompt in the bottom right corner. Indeed, it does. > (Didn't try mobile.) And my eyes didn't make it that far down the screen. If i can't read the first paragraph, there's no point in scanning further down the page (and certainly not to look for something as esoteric as an option to disable what should not be there in the first place). Grumble, grumble.

This is probably why evil geniuses usually lose in the end.

Re: From CVS to Git, thirty years of source control

#52

Post by jmclnx »

Very nice article!

I still use RCS at home for some items and I always liked the locking feature, it avoided lots of issues and it in a way forced changes to be small when using in a team. Plus it forced developers to communicate with each other :) Plus I really like its "$Id$" function when checking in the change.

But I have moved some items to git over the past few years, I like its signing function and on OpenBSD it works with Emacs. RCS on OpenBSD aborts in Emacs unless you install package grcs (GNU RCS) and block OpenBSD's RCS. I only wish git had a built in like "$Id$". I have figured out a work-around but I still would rather have a similar function as RCS has.

At work I finally got people to use git a few years ago, there no one used any form of Source Code Control and it was utter chaos.

Re: From CVS to Git, thirty years of source control

#53

Post by aworks »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #13

My first contact was VMS with its versioning file system. Then RCS - before that we copied zip files around.

In the 80s, I implemented the use of VAX Code Management System (CMS) on a large commericial avionics software project. Made me a little more confident when later flying a particular Boeing plane.

I had been at Purdue when Walter Tichy built RCS. I discovered in my first job that businesses lagged the state of the art more than I ever imagined.

On the other hand, I was later at Rational who then bought ClearCase. Argh...

Re: From CVS to Git, thirty years of source control

#55

Post by TeriyakiBomb »

anthk wrote: post #54
TeriyakiBomb wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why in rust times?

Issues on Git and oortability. Crates are a disaster and Rust is not that portable.

Ah ok, I don't have much bearing, I'm not super au fait with the rust ecosystem.

Re: From CVS to Git, thirty years of source control

#56

Post by KingOfCoders »

aworks wrote: post #53
KingOfCoders wrote: post #13

My first contact was VMS with its versioning file system. Then RCS - before that we copied zip files around.

In the 80s, I implemented the use of VAX Code Management System (CMS) on a large commericial avionics software project. Made me a little more confident when later flying a particular Boeing plane. I had been at Purdue when Walter Tichy built RCS. I discovered in my first job that businesses lagged the state of the art more than I ever imagined. On the other hand, I was later at Rational who then bought ClearCase. Arg…

What a history!

Re: From CVS to Git, thirty years of source control

#57

Post by jinushaun »

binaryturtle wrote: post #2

I use Subversion w/o a server too. You can have your repositories locally (file:///Path/to/repository). All my own (single man) projects are in local SVN repositories. For my use case git is just too much extra friction, and I still love to have my one single unique global revisions number that is linearly increasing with each commit. :)

Ironically, GitHub became popular because it gave everyone a centralized repo—exactly the thing people liked about SVN.

Re: From CVS to Git, thirty years of source control

#58

Post by badsectoracula »

xorcist wrote: post #45
badsectoracula wrote: post #43

> What SVN didn't fix was the fundamental centralized model. You could not commit without a network connection. The repository was still a single server. "Working offline" meant "reading-only", you could browse history but not record any new work, and the day the server was down was the day the whole team waited. FWIW this is how most projects work anyway . And IMO Subversion is still the best VCS when you have a lot…

You could always keep a local svn repository and commit to that, if you really wanted to commit without connectivity. But in practice most people don't, as evidenced by the success of github, which grinds many development processes to a halt every time it is down. It also ignores svk, which is (was?) a popular add-on to svn, which provided a convenient way to do this and replay all the commits to the central svn repo…

The thing with Subversion's native support for the feature is that it is, well, native. No workarounds (using a local svn repo is extremely clunky) or external tools needed, the feature is part of the normal official workflow.

The issue isn't that it was technically impossible to do this before, it is that it wasn't something available out of the box back when it mattered. The feature was added several years after Git's dominance and by that point few people cared about Subversion.

Re: From CVS to Git, thirty years of source control

#59

Post by xorcist »

badsectoracula wrote: post #58
xorcist wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could always keep a local svn repository and commit to that, if you really wanted to commit without connectivity. But in practice most people don't, as evidenced by the success of github, which grinds many development processes to a halt every time it is down. It also ignores svk, which is (was?) a popular add-on to svn, which provided a convenient way to do this and replay all the commits to the central svn repo…

The thing with Subversion's native support for the feature is that it is, well, native. No workarounds (using a local svn repo is extremely clunky) or external tools needed, the feature is part of the normal official workflow. The issue isn't that it was technically impossible to do this before, it is that it wasn't something available out of the box back when it mattered. The feature was added several years after Gi…

While not native, svk got pretty popular already in 2005, at a time when git was not used much outside LKML. Github wouldn't be released for a couple more years, which had a huge part in git dominance. Bazaar, darcs, Mercurial were all somewhat popular, but a pretty common question was what the killer feature really was that svn couldn't do.

Re: From CVS to Git, thirty years of source control

#60

Post by binaryturtle »

jinushaun wrote: post #57
binaryturtle wrote: post #2

I use Subversion w/o a server too. You can have your repositories locally (file:///Path/to/repository). All my own (single man) projects are in local SVN repositories. For my use case git is just too much extra friction, and I still love to have my one single unique global revisions number that is linearly increasing with each commit. :)

Ironically, GitHub became popular because it gave everyone a centralized repo—exactly the thing people liked about SVN.

It used to be possible to use GitHub via svn too (but I think they removed that feature a while ago.)
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