imports from CVS

imports from CVS

Posted Mar 30, 2004 8:01 UTC (Tue) by mbp (guest, #2737)
In reply to: gnu arch by jonabbey
Parent article: subversion 1.0 is released

I don't think conversion from CVS should be given as much weight as it often is.

It is hard to do properly, it often takes a lot of admin time to do the conversion (even with svn), and at the end you produce something that you will rarely, if ever refer to. It sinks effort into an asset that will depreciate over time, as the changes become less and less relevant to new work.

None of these tools force you to stop using CVS. It's easy to keep old versions in CVS, and new versions in the new system. If you need to refer to the history, or make a bugfix branch of an old release, do it in CVS. That is a *far* safer choice than hoping the conversion went properly, and if you're trying to make a bugfix branch then being absolutely safe is probably important.

What I suggest is: keep existing mature trees in CVS. Try a small project in the new system: svn or arch or whatever. If you like it, start new projects in that system and see how they go. When it comes time to do a new x.0 version of your product, snapshot CVS and do future development in the new system. (People often create new CVS modules for this case anyhow.)

Importing from CVS can be an interesting benchmark but it is not very relevant to day-to-day work.

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