Re: emacs test suite

[Robert Anderson]

--- Original Message ---
From: Richard Stallman <address@hidden>
To: "Robert Anderson" <address@hidden>
Subject: Re: emacs test suite

>    If emacs used a distributed version control system, this would
>    not be a problem.
>
>We use CVS--isn't that suitable?

It's reasonable, but has some limitations.  For example, I am
potentially interested in maintaining a set of tests, but you are
not convinced of the utility of them and so you'd rather not have
them in your CVS - so you don't give me write access.

That's fine, and perfectly reasonable.  However, that puts me in
a bad spot, because although I can follow your work by updating
from CVS, I cannot "commit" my work (the tests) if it involves
changes to any files or dirs in your CVS repo.  So I am stuck,
and likely to give up, because I have hit a bottleneck in CVS
which only allows me to work with your sources if you have given
me write access to your repository.  I can make simple local
changes, but I can't version control my own work.

If instead I had a branch that I could store locally (this is the
"distributed" part), I could version control my own work,
continue to incorporate your changes, and as it became more
useful, you could at some point decide that you'd like to merge
my branch into your sources - and since I've been updating from
your repo, that would be a relatively smooth process (as opposed
to what CVS would allow:  for me to import into a local CVS repo
at some moment in time, and develop from there.  Then, when ready
to merge, all of the work that had occured in the main repo from
the time I imported would have to be carefully recreated to
prevent regressions from the merge).

Not to mention the performance boon of development from local
copies of the repo...

Bob