Comments on: Why We’re Not Switching to Git

By: David Wolever

David Wolever — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:30:12 +0000

@Dmitri, @Jeff: Yes, I’m quite well aware that the problems are social, not technical, and that there aren’t very many compelling reasons to start a project on SVN these days. I also completely agree.

I guess it wasn’t clear that I’m thinking about the case of a classroom environment with DrProject (I _believe_ that’s what Greg is talking about)… And in that case it’s good to learn about social issues, but if technology can help mitigate them, all the better.

By: The Third Bit » Blog Archive » A Guide to Distributed Version Control Systems

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:16:35 +0000

[...] This guide at InfoQ is a nice counterpoint to my list of reasons for not switching to Git. [...]

By: Lucian

Lucian — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 07:36:46 +0000

You could do like mozilla and test the three DVCSs for a while to see if any fits.

But you have some good points for not doing anything, except for #4. RoR is really not that widely used, Zope and Django by themselves are strong competition.

By: Shot

Shot — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 04:45:08 +0000

It doesn’t have to be an either-or choice. At least Bazaar has a bzr-svn plugin that lets you operate transparently on a Subversion repository (checkout/branch from it, commit to it), so I don’t really care any more whether somebody uses Subversion or Bazaar, I just branch from them and am done.

By: Dmitri

Dmitri — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 04:15:47 +0000

@David: Did your read some of the comments? Graydon’s comment ( http://blog.red-bean.com/sussman/?p=20#comment-103 ) is pretty good at describing why code-bombing is a social issue and not a technical one.

#2 looks the most relevant to me. The tools for DVCSs are quite immature, so you need to use the system continuously to keep all the commands and parameters to them in your head. With CVS/SVN, you can just use a GUI for everything.

By: Jeff Balogh

Jeff Balogh — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 03:05:05 +0000

Well, if we’re going to invoke Sussman, I have to point out
http://blog.red-bean.com/sussman/?p=90

Quote (from another svn developer): “I’m pretty confident that, for a new open
source project of non-huge size, I would not choose Subversion to host it”

By: bignose

bignose — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 23:37:52 +0000

Your first two reasons are good; documentation and tool integration support are certainly sufficient concerns in themselves to resist the pull toward a new tool.

As for the “local branches can be lost” scenario, this is one of the primary reasons why I use Bazaar (http://bazaar-vcs.org/) for all my projects.

It’s fully distributed, but also has elegant support for a centralised workflow (called “checkout”, http://bazaar-vcs.org/CheckoutTutorial) that can be easily switched to and from distributed mode so you’re not stranded if you don’t have access to the central repository.

I highly recommend you consider Bazaar when it comes time to look again at a distributed VCS. (As a bonus for you, it’s written entirely in Python

By: David Wolever

David Wolever — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 23:14:52 +0000

I’ve got to adimt that I’m finally on your side here Greg. There are a few reasons (especially #4), but this quote was what finally made me change my mind:
“It’s great! If I want to implement a new feature, I don’t need to have commit access at all. I have my own private copy of the repository, so I can write the whole thing by myself.”
From this post: http://blog.red-bean.com/sussman/?p=20

In related news, now that SVN 1.5 (complete with merge tracking) is out, one of the biggest reasons to use DVCSs (merging doesn’t suck) is gone, so we’ll see what happens… Who knows, maybe some smart professors *cough*cough* will even teach there students how to use it well?

By: Robert

Robert — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 22:32:56 +0000

Don’t buy the hype, RoR has not grown by “leaps and bounds”.

By: ionel

ionel — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 21:06:11 +0000

you can’t really place a bet after the race =]