Linus has guts [LWN.net]

Linus has guts

Posted Apr 14, 2005 11:34 UTC (Thu) by filipjoelsson (subscriber, #2622)
In reply to: Linus has guts by Tobu
Parent article: The guts of git

Hmm, if it takes Linus two hours to merge a patch-bomb, I think he has put less time into developing this new foundation for an SCM - than he would have been spending waiting for one of the existing SCMs merging his patches over the next month or two.

Others are spending time inventing fancy algos, theories, and such, but fail on the real-world test. Why should Linus not scratch this desperate itch then? Why should he come to an existing project, and overturn it with his rather extreme demands? Does he have the time to wait for one of them to "grow up"? I think not. Remember that he is working full time, whereas many contributors to smaller projects are programming in their spare time. Thus, waiting on the spare-time programmers would be rather frustrating.

So, it's not a question about Linus being a rock star. It's a question of efficiency.

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Linus has guts

Posted Apr 14, 2005 18:44 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

the other projects have had three years to develop a better SCM solution.

as Linux pointed out in the announcement that he was going to look at other options for SCM they aren't useable yet for something the size of the kernel yet.

we'll see if git ends up beng a dead-end system or the base for a better system in the future, but it has a very different focus then the other SCM options.

every one of the other options is starting with what the UI is, what commands the scm will implement. git is starting from the other direction and building the low-level pices (and building them to be fast) and then layering the UI on top of that.

this seems like a much better approach to take, and the other SCM systems can take advantage of these primitives as well (assuming they are willing to live with a linux-only limitation or the slowdown from other systems that don't have some of the underlying infrastructure that git is counting on in the OS for it's speed)