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Re: CVS bashing?
From: |
Eric Siegerman |
Subject: |
Re: CVS bashing? |
Date: |
Wed, 11 Apr 2001 16:44:49 -0400 |
User-agent: |
Mutt/1.2.5i |
On Wed, Apr 11, 2001 at 01:04:28PM -0500, Gary Heuston wrote:
> Someone brought up a site on another mailing list about CVS and its
> limitations and was citing this as a reason to not use CVS...what do you
> all think about this? Some of this stuff I have personally witmessed
> (i.e. large binary file problem, no directory versioning) but I'm
> curious as to others opinions...
Yeah, most of his technical points are pretty valid:
> CVS does not provide Tree/Dir versioning
> Support for attaching File & Project Meta Data is weak
> Activities like file renaming are not naturally supported
I don't think there'll be much argument about these.
He mentions Subversion (http://subversion.tigris.org/index.html).
I'm keeping an eye on that too, for all of the above reasons; it
looks promising. Bitkeeper (http://www.bitkeeper.com/) has also
been mentioned, but it's only semifree.
> CVS stability can be flaky at times (large binaries)
I haven't experienced any flakiness -- at least not with recent
versions; it was worse in the past. But then, I haven't put any
large binaries into CVS, so I wouldn't know about that.
Judging by recent list traffic, though, sure the repo gets big
(they don't "diff" very well). Not sure what's "flaky" about it,
unless you don't have enough /tmp space (which is arguably a
sysadmin problem, not CVS's fault).
It's hard to tell whether he means it's flaky specifically with
large binaries, or whether they're merely one example. If the
former, he may have a point. If the latter, I'd say it's at best
an unfair generalization.
> Merging is very primitive
Hmmm. How could it be better? NOT a rhetorical question; I'd
really like to know. (I haven't used the commercial ones he's
comparing CVS to.)
> And finally, If you want an answer fast, you can?t rely (or blame) the vendor
Not a technical problem. Subversion won't be able to solve it
either.
Re lack of directory versioning, he says:
> (This in my opinion is unacceptable)
Well, he's right; that is an opinion. Others' opinions differ.
The binary-file thing is questionable IMO, and I can't evaluate
the merging issue. The rest, though, are indeed valid reasons
not to use CVS. Of course there are lots of valid reasons *to*
use CVS. As always, it comes down to a tradeoff.
That CVS is free software can be either a plus or a minus, it
seems to me, depending on one's situation. The standard
open-source vs. proprietary debate. (We've all seen it ad
nauseum, so lets not go there again now, ok?)
--
| | /\
|-_|/ > Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont. address@hidden
| | /
With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not
necessarily a good idea.
- RFC 1925 (quoting an unnamed source)
Re: CVS bashing?, Alexander Kamilewicz, 2001/04/18
Re: CVS bashing?, Paul Sander, 2001/04/11