>>> On 03 May 2011 at 19:01, in message
<BANLkTinUNrWqjr04__VFcWxA9vvz9FvpSQ@mail.gmail.com>, Daniel Kho
<daniel.kho@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Martin,
> Add one more (I think this is also distributed, after reading your
> description):
It isn't, see below. Sorry!
> * TortoiseSVN
There are TortoiseXYZ clients for almost all the systems I mentioned (Mercurial, Bazaar and Git certainly). They all provide much the same level of Windows Explorer integration, so i don't think is an issue for any of the systems.
I think there's some confusion over the term "distributed". It means the *whole* repository is local to the user. Checkins can be done locally. You can pull other peoples changes directly from their repository. And you can push changes to a server from which others can pull (but this is *not* required necessarily)
Subversion is not (currently, although there is talk of it) a distributed system. Subversion also has a number of other downsides that make me shy away from it (despite using it an awful lot).
My experience of its merging capabilities is pretty bad (I resorted to an external tool) although it has apparently improved over the years, I still don't think it is up to the level of Git/Bzr (IMHO). Branching and merging is absolutely key for a distributed development programme.
Subversion can be slow compared to the other systems.
Finally, it keeps all your "last version" files locally (which is OK), but uncompressed and in plain text within a .svn folder within *each* of your folders in the source tree. This means that your source tree is twice as big as it needs to be. More importantly when you do a search (in explorer, or with "find" or a recursive grep for example) you get hits within all your source files *and* all the .svn folders (unless you take pains to remove them).
The other systems keep a very compressed *entire* repository in a ".git" ".bzr", etc folder in one place in your project tree.
>
> TortoiseSVN is a client-side software (and it's free, as in beer). At the
> server side, I'm not quite sure, but my guess is that they can use
> Subversion (or any Subversion-like) repository.
Well, yes, you have to use Subversion. No guessing - that's all there is to it.
> It also has some of the
> features you mentioned (Windows Explorer integration, automatic merging,
> diff, etc.). When a client checks out a project, he/she will have a copy of
> the repository on his local drive
No, they have a copy of the last revision only. Not the whole repo with *all* its history and branches and everything else.
> and can make as many number of changes
> before he becomes satisfied to check his changes back to the main
> repository.
This is *not* the same is distributed version control. For example, with SVN you *cannot* "check in" locally, you must check in to the server.
>
> I guess there are other good Subversion clients (other than TortoiseSVN),
> and hopefully, they too provide distributed computing.
>
Lets split clients and servers:
There are TortoiseGit, TortoiseBzr, TortoiseHG, clients to make all the systems easy to use. And there are other Subversion clients (will still be for subversion and hence not distributed)
Subversion (and hence TortoiseSVN) is not currently a distributed system (their tag line is "Enterprise-class *centralized* version control for the masses" - my emphasis.)
> "* Platforms:
> - Is good Windows support important?
> - Is good Mac support important?
> - Is good Linux (other Unix?) support important?"
> To me (my own personal opinion), at least good Unix and Windows support will
> be great. If we choose one distributed solution that also has a central
> server (like Git or Subversion/TortoiseSVN), the server can be Unix, while
> the clients can either be Unix, Windows, or Linux (or even Mac).
OK, I was really thinking entirely of client support there - assuming we use an external provider of servers, it's not a problem what it runs on !
>
>
>
> "Alternatively:
> * we could set up our own server.
> * we could just all have our own local repositories and pull changes from
> each other (the Linux kernel is developed like this)."
> Actually I like this idea. But that's because I have a homeserver (just a
> laptop actually) running on OpenSolaris, which uses the ZFS filesystem (and
> can pull changes from each other just like a version control system).
> However, there may be others who may only have Windows. I guess we need to
> think about them as well.
No server is required. It all runs locally, (using the Tortoise* tools on Windows), Windows users will be fine. It's just a different workflow - instead of pushing changes to a server, you email out a patchset and those who want it can merge it into theirs
Cheers,
Martin
-- Martin Thompson CEng MIET TRW Conekt, Stratford Road, Solihull, B90 4GW. UK +44 (0)121-627-3569 : martin.j.thompson@trw.com http://www.conekt.co.uk/ Conekt is a trading division of TRW Limited Registered in England, No. 872948 Registered Office Address: Stratford Road, Solihull B90 4AX -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.Received on Wed May 4 01:11:13 2011
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