Linus & the Lunatics, Part I (Linux Journal) [LWN.net]

Doc Searls and Linux Journal present the first of three transcriptions of talks by Linus and friends during the latest Linux Lunacy Geek Cruise. "I am firmly convinced that if your source control doesn't support random people making their own branches, and then being able to merge as they do development with anybody else's branch, the source control is not worth bothering with. And if BitKeeper ever goes away, I will not go to Subversion or something like that. I will go back to tarballs and patches. Because at least that one doesn't have merge problems that most other projects have. Which is kind of strange, but.... It has been very productive. It has helped enormously having something that is truly distributed. But I did want to mention that."

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What Linus can use if Bitkeeper goes away

Posted Nov 24, 2003 19:48 UTC (Mon) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]

Fortunately, Linus won't have to go back to tarballs if bitkeeper goes away. He can use this. The latest version of "arch" seems to be called "tla". It does provide the ability for any person to create branches, anywhere, without authorization from the person/site that the branch refers to. It's nice to see that this project didn't die.

Bruce

alternatives

Posted Nov 24, 2003 20:20 UTC (Mon) by stevenj (guest, #421) [Link]

There are also other alternatives being developed with similar features, e.g. darcs.

alternatives (monotone)

Posted Nov 24, 2003 22:21 UTC (Mon) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link]

Or something like monotone.
It feels very mature already. Comes with a nice manual, imports your old rcs/cvs repositories easily, has patch authentication and comes with a Debian package.

Nice comparisons between the above systems and arch:

alternatives (monotone)

Posted Nov 25, 2003 6:23 UTC (Tue) by docolczyk (guest, #14874) [Link]

Which of these SCM ( including BitKeeper ) use a copy/merge system
as opposed to the semistandard check-in/check-out system?

I stick to CVS because I find copy/merge the single most important
feature. ( Having been screwed when people had things checked-out
when they took some time off on several occasions. )

How about real client/server systems. This time it was me that was
doing the screwing by deleting the repository. I prefer not to have direct
access unless I ask for it. Prevent accidental deleting that way.

alternatives (monotone)

Posted Nov 25, 2003 9:11 UTC (Tue) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

go look at bitkeeper, you do copy/merge at the repository level, not at the file level you are used to doing with CVS. instead each developer has their own entire repository and you merge back and forth between them

alternatives (monotone)

Posted Dec 11, 2003 10:50 UTC (Thu) by docolczyk (guest, #14874) [Link]

I took a very brief look at bitkeeper then quickly ran away.
Lately I've been hearing some nasty comments about it's licensing.
So I checked that out first. The liccense ( of the free version )could only be viewed after you downloaded and installed the software.
To me that just sent upn too many red flags.

Any oninions on the elternatives?

Linus & the Lunatics, Part I (Linux Journal)

Posted Nov 25, 2003 5:42 UTC (Tue) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

"Because I notice that what I'm not actually doing any more is coding
[...] I'm writing this C parser because I decided I needed it and wanted
it."

Those two sentences (a paragraph apart) really sum up the whole open
source movement for me. I also really enjoyed his whole "It's a C parser.
Well, it's actually a whole front end, because there's not much more to
it... Well, okay, it's got a code generator, too, but it's just a little
one, for testing." I'm just waiting to hear how he justifies the
instruction scheduler when he writes one.

Would you care to elaborate?

Posted Nov 25, 2003 10:25 UTC (Tue) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]

I really did not get your point.

Would you care to elaborate?

Posted Nov 25, 2003 21:29 UTC (Tue) by jjstwerff (subscriber, #4082) [Link]

You won't get programs without coding.
Linus tells us that he doens't program that much and that he only writes simple things.....
Like ANSI-C parsers, code checkers and compilers...

That simple stuff for him is way to complex to 99.5% of the rest of the world. But he keeps telling that the real kernel work is a bit too much hassle to do in his spare time ;)

As a job he is managing the project.