Subversion: Is the jump from CVS worth it? [LWN.net]

Subversion: Is the jump from CVS worth it?

Posted Mar 18, 2004 13:51 UTC (Thu) by RonO (guest, #13096) [Link]

In fairness to LWN, it's a contributed article. I wouldn't expect the Editor to change the content of the submission. It's clear [to me] the article is intended to be a "rah rah" piece for switching to Subversion. Perhaps you could write and submit a "rah rah" article for switching to one of the alternatives.

Subversion: Is the jump from CVS worth it?

Posted Mar 18, 2004 13:57 UTC (Thu) by icculus_98 (guest, #8535) [Link]

The article is intended merely to look at CVS -> Subversion, not to
necessarily say that Subversion is the *best* source control system.
Obviously CVS isn't considered the *best* source control system by many,
but it's the defacto standard today.

Perhaps we'll take a look at the other source control systems in future
weeks.

Subversion: Is the jump from CVS worth it?

Posted Mar 18, 2004 14:28 UTC (Thu) by jonth (subscriber, #4008) [Link]

Not true. The editor has every right to request a change to the content of the submission (with the permission of the author) or reject it entirely, if it expresses a view that is not the view of LWN. That's his job.

My objection is that a piece of clear propaganda appeared in a news journal. The fact that the editor left it in puts him in a similar position to all those mainstream journalists that don't bother checking out SCO's press releases before blithely printing them.

Usually, LWN is very good at being even handed - even SCO gets the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. But this was just an advert disguised as a story, and shouldn't have been accepted.

Jonth

Subversion: Is the jump from CVS worth it?

Posted Mar 18, 2004 14:44 UTC (Thu) by icculus_98 (guest, #8535) [Link]

I apologize that it came across like an advertisement. It was not intended that way at all:

From the LWN.net Author's Guide:

The overall voice of an article should be factual and authoritative. Do your research, and let it show. LWN has a long history of allowing the author's opinion to show through in its writing; in our opinion, it is better to let the audience know where the author is coming from than to try to adopt some pose of "objectivity." Opinions, however, should never get in the way of the facts; your reader should be able to separate the two.

The piece was written as somebody who has used CVS and has migrated to Subversion, and is explaining why the change was beneficial.

I will keep your criticism in mind, though, for any future article submissions.

Subversion: Is the jump from CVS worth it?

Posted Mar 19, 2004 16:00 UTC (Fri) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]

One observation: You sound more like a fanboy than the author.

The author clearly had a focus, also expressed in the headline: to report from his migration from CVS to Subversion. His last sentence about "Subversion will be the future dominant revision control system" can be seen in two different ways: Either it expresses his enthusiasm, or it reflects his realism on the non-technical issues concerning tool selection by the OSS community (read Richard Gabriel's famous "Worse is Better" essay to learn what I mean).

Frankly, your name calling is also not appropriate. Calling all people who use centralized CMM systems dumb (with the exception of Greg Hudson) is by no means professional. I'm following CM systems closely, both in research and practice, since 1984. (Actually, your dialogue style reminds me at the atmosphere at the 1st International ACM Workshop on Software Version and Configuration Control, at Grassau (Austria). Lot's of people there who thought they have found the holy grail with changeset-based CM, too.)

I have worked both with centralized and decentralized systems, with revision and changeset approaches, with proprietary and commercial systems. Believe me, the world is not as black and white as you want to make it seen. There are very sound reasons for many CM versions, including arch, Subversion, and CVS [sic!]. It depends on feature points, maturity, type of support expected, how many legacy projects are around, familiarity, etc.

Regards, Joachim

Subversion: Is the jump from CVS worth it?

Posted Mar 19, 2004 17:27 UTC (Fri) by zooko (subscriber, #2589) [Link]

Joachim: I think you might be confusing me ("Zooko") with another poster ("Jonth").

I'm sorry if my dialogue style angered you. I didn't intend to say that all other people who prefer centralized revision control systems are dumb -- I intended to say that until recently (Greg Hudson's articles) I hadn't seen any writing which was both cognizant of decentralized revision control and also argued that centralized revision control was better for some uses. Instead I had seem quite a lot of advocacy for decentralized systems which evinced knowledge of centralized systems, and I had seen quite a lot of advocacy for Subversion which evinced no awareness of decentralized systems.

I'm sure that this says more about my limited exposure to the ideas than it says about the intelligence of the users of centralized revision control systems.

But unfortunately the current lwn article, to which I was responding, is another example of someone who does not seem to be aware of the decentralized alternative, and is advocating Subversion.

Subversion: Is the jump from CVS worth it?

Posted Mar 19, 2004 17:30 UTC (Fri) by zooko (subscriber, #2589) [Link]

By the way, I quite agree with your comments about the suitability of different tools in different situations, and I am interested to hear about the history of the idea of changesets in revision control.