Re: [boost] As a side note about source control

Subject: Re: [boost] As a side note about source control
From: Christoph Heindl (christoph.heindl_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-09-01 01:58:14

On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 6:52 AM, Eric Hopper <hopper_at_[hidden]> wrote:

>
> There are lots of different versions of Boost that have been released
> and are installed on the various systems I work on.  Not only that, but
> regardless of whether or not Boost ever accepts my changes I want to
> keep them locally so I will always be able to have a version of Boost
> with my changes.

Have you heard of vendor-branches? They are a bit of an hassle, I have
to agree though.

> [...] If Boost had used a distributed version control system from the very
> beginning, that previous 6 paragraphs could've been condensed down to a
> couple of paragraphs.  And future merges with Boost would generally be
> pretty trivial unless the random library changed significantly.

I agree.

>
> The ability to fork is absolutely central to Open Source.  It's harder
> to fork when you lose the history and ability to track changes against
> the original because a project's history and ability to track your
> changes to it is as important as a dump of the source code at a moment
> in time, if not more so.  Distributed source control avoids these
> problems and makes forking easier, almost trivial.  Distributed source
> control therefor fits the Open Source model better.

I guess that's one of the main points to consider.

>
> In my opinion, distributed source control is the best fit for almost any
> development.  But that's just my opinion, and I don't have nearly as
> much in the way of hard logical argument to back that up.  I just know
> that I've used source control for nearly (and I'm rather embarassed that
> the word 'nearly' is there, but a 17 yr old in 1988 isn't likely to have
> heard of source control) as long as I've been a professional programmer.
> And distributed source control systems are the first source control
> systems I've used where I didn't feel like I was spending a lot of time
> fighting the source control system because it didn't work the way I
> needed it to.  Discipline does not always require pain.

The reason I asked foremost is that we (our company) are considering to move
to an distributed version control system and are currently in the step
of acquiring pros/cons.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Best regards,
Christoph