So, Bitkeeper is 2x better than the competition? [LWN.net]

So, Bitkeeper is 2x better than the competition?

Posted May 12, 2004 3:51 UTC (Wed) by AdHoc (subscriber, #1115)
In reply to: So, Bitkeeper is 2x better than the competition? by jae
Parent article: Bitkeeper after the storm - Part 1 (NewsForge)

Of course this (using BitKeeper) is better than before, even 10x. Even CVS, as crappy as it is, would have been a major improvement.

Linux doesn't think so (at least according to the article). I don't know if he is smarter than you, but I'm pretty sure he is smarter than me. I'll go ahead and believe him :) I do know that we use CVS in a medium size development group at work where development is fast and somewhat chaotic. In some cases CVS is worse than just sending patches arround, because CVS enforces file level granularity. I would love to switch to bitkeeper. -AdHoc

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So, Bitkeeper is 2x better than the competition?

Posted May 12, 2004 6:50 UTC (Wed) by piman (subscriber, #8957) [Link]

CVS would have been a lot better than the nothing that was there before. I suspect that SVN, Arch, or Monotone would show gains comparable to BitKeeper, at least in Linus's individual productivity. The total productivity gained from cross-repository management is harder to measure.

I can't say much about BitKeeper because I'm not allowed to use it, though.

So, Bitkeeper is 2x better than the competition?

Posted May 12, 2004 8:10 UTC (Wed) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

> I can't say much about BitKeeper because
> I'm not allowed to use it, though.

Who's not allowing you to use it? Certainly not BitMover, as you imply by
omission, as they allow /anyone/ to use it. Sure, the "gratis" version
has some strings attached re developing free alternatives (strings which I
don't believe make sense, for the reasons someone else already posted,
but..), but that doesn't mean you can't use the money-ware version.

Duncan

So, Bitkeeper is 2x better than the competition?

Posted May 13, 2004 4:48 UTC (Thu) by dlang (subscriber, #313) [Link]

if you work for a company developing version control software you don't get to use the free version of bitkeeper.

many people take that to read that they are forbidden to use it at all, but all it really means is that you will have to pay to use it.

So, Bitkeeper is 2x better than the competition?

Posted May 13, 2004 15:36 UTC (Thu) by vmole (subscriber, #111) [Link]

I suspect that SVN, Arch, or Monotone would show gains comparable to BitKeeper, at least in Linus's individual productivity.

Nope. Linus's main problem is dealing with patch merging, and merging multiple trees (aka branches). None of those tools comes close to BK in dealing with merging. Linus didn't use SCM tools before BK because the tools available to him didn't solve the problem. A lot of the BK feature set was driven by Linus's feedback.

Now, CVS/SVN/etc. may be sufficient for your needs - they are for mine, or at least the cost of BK is still greater than the cost of the extra time I spend with CVS and SVN. But pretending they are currently equivalent to BK will just mean they never get better.