How to Fail at SVN

#1

Post by Altreus » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 4:06 PM UTC

Re: How to Fail at SVN

#2

Post by pquerna » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 4:49 PM UTC

4/5 are problems unrelated to SVN. Heck, Git can burn you on all of those.

1/5 is about using svnserve instead of file:// and network mounts, and doesn't need to be a rant, just a don't use file:// protocol for shared repositories.

I wish HN had downvotes for an article like this.

Re: How to Fail at SVN

#3

Post by yoyar » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 4:57 PM UTC

I hate using Windows too.

Re: How to Fail at SVN

#4

Post by Altreus » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 5:00 PM UTC

pquerna wrote: post #2

4/5 are problems unrelated to SVN. Heck, Git can burn you on all of those. 1/5 is about using svnserve instead of file:// and network mounts, and doesn't need to be a rant, just a don't use file:// protocol for shared repositories. I wish HN had downvotes for an article like this.

Thanks for the sophisticated and helpful response. I'll obviously implement many of the suggestions you made to improve my article writing.

Re: How to Fail at SVN

#5

Post by DanHulton » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 5:09 PM UTC

Pffft. Complaining about TortoiseSVN? Use SmartSVN - it works in all 3 OSes, too. I know, I've had to use it in all 3 and it's nice to have that consistancy.

Re: How to Fail at SVN

#6

Post by rix0r » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 5:23 PM UTC

I'm guessing that you've never had to use svn+ssh:// with a group of developers. The file permissions hell you get into using that with multiple users is very frustrating.

I much prefer the http:// access method, and have never had a locking problem.

Re: How to Fail at SVN

#7

Post by sapphirecat » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 5:33 PM UTC

> By default in SVN, everyone is committing to the same - and indeed the master, de-facto, controlling, always perfect - branch. Trunk.

It's worse than that; svn asks you to maintain the trunk/tags/branches directory structure yourself, rather than including them as core concepts in the VCS itself(1). So, someone can commit an update to something under tags/ and svn won't even give out a warning, since it has no idea that tags/* are supposed to be write-once.

1) Looks like they added `svn branch`, sometime after the 1.4.x version I'm actually using.

Re: How to Fail at SVN

#8

Post by dasil003 » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 5:41 PM UTC

Every time I read something about SVN I just thank god I don't have to use it anymore. Just the thought of a merge-heavy workflow in svn gives me the willies.

Re: How to Fail at SVN

#9

Post by JoachimSchipper » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 5:46 PM UTC

pquerna wrote: post #2

4/5 are problems unrelated to SVN. Heck, Git can burn you on all of those. 1/5 is about using svnserve instead of file:// and network mounts, and doesn't need to be a rant, just a don't use file:// protocol for shared repositories. I wish HN had downvotes for an article like this.

It's more of a "how to fail at version control", yes - but with a Subversion slant (along the lines of "it can work fine, but the default is bad").

I don't see how that makes this a particularly bad article, though.

Re: How to Fail at SVN

#10

Post by nailer » Wed, Aug 25, 2010, 6:16 PM UTC

Altreus wrote: post #4

pquerna wrote: post #2

4/5 are problems unrelated to SVN. Heck, Git can burn you on all of those. 1/5 is about using svnserve instead of file:// and network mounts, and doesn't need to be a rant, just a don't use file:// protocol for shared repositories. I wish HN had downvotes for an article like this.

Thanks for the sophisticated and helpful response. I'll obviously implement many of the suggestions you made to improve my article writing.

> It's neither reliable nor safe, nor can you easily administrate it.

While you're at it, the word you wanted was 'administer'.