Re: SCMS question

Hi,

Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> CVSup is not required, and is absent from most existing clients. I don't 
> use it any more since the Fedora project stopped supporting it.

..which is quite understandable, concerning the PITA compiling modula-3 
gives you (or at least has given me, it still hurts).

> The point you are missing is that, while we know existing buildfarm 
> members all have CVS installed, we don't know that they have SVN or 
> whatever, and requiring them to install it will involve significant 
> distributed pain. 

Okay, I certainly agree that CVS is much more wide spread and available 
than most (if not all) other VCSes. Let's change that ;-)

> It will also involve some considerable localised pain 
> (probably on my part) in rewriting the client. Right now I'm thinking it 
> might make some sense to future-proof buildfarm by creating some sort of 
> snapshot server. OTOH, if we avoid use of whatever SCM system that the 
> project uses, we aren't testing that part of the process.

Did I mention that monotone is a very good snapshot server? *duck*

You probably don't want to reinvent the weel, as 'snapshot serving' is 
exactly what a VCS should do (among other things).

> You're making Tom's point again :-)

Yeah, sorry, couldn't resist :-)

> IIRC you don't need to be connected to the repo to run "svn diff", 
> whereas you do to run "cvs diff".

Yes, in the simplest case of comparing against the immediate successor 
revision. But certainly not for: svn diff -r${FURTHER_IN_THE_PAST}, as 
subversion does not have that data available (nor does CVS, for that 
matter).

> We know the warts. If this were a green fields project there is no doubt 
> we would not use CVS. But many proponents of other systems ignore the 
> downside of changing.

Well, I guess many advocates for other VCSes (like myself) simply don't 
particularly like to talk about the downsides...  But they are probably 
more aware of them than most other people.

> One thing I want to know is that whatever we change to will still be 
> there, maintained and in widespread use, many years down the track. So 
> far I am not sure about that for any possible replacement, with the 
> possible exception of SVN.

That's certainly a valid concern, too. Probably *the* one where monotone 
is weaker compared to git and mercurial. :-(  We are working on that 
issue, though.

Regards

Markus