Re: [boost] torvalds on branching/merging (was Boost Development Environment proposal)

From: Bjørn Roald (bjorn_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-06-07 19:07:35

troy d straszheim wrote:
> in the previous thread,
> On Wed, Jun 06, 2007 at 08:49:14AM -0400, David Abrahams wrote:
>   
> [snip]
>   
>> It depends where you're committing things.  One of the best reasons
>> for branching in a traditional version control setup is to give
>> authors a place to check in their partially-finished (i.e. "broken")
>> work.  That _improves_ results in numerous ways.  Obviously, there has
>> to be some kind of check in the system for bad commits, but only those
>> that a library author declares to be "good," and thus, ready for
>> release.
>>     
>
> Since we're talking about devel vs. stable and what the meaning of
> 'trunk' really is, I found Linus Torvald's google tech talk on git
> (which is source control for the linux kernel) to be *very*
> interesting (fairly entertaining as well).
>
>   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8
>
> He places a very high value on the ability to 
>
>   * branch at any time
>   * merge easily
>   * commit/branch/merge locally (not in the 'central' repository)
>   

Git sounds very interesting, but with boost in subversion, it is 
relatively simple for anybody interested as group or individuals to do 
many of these things now.  Check out SVK, which extend the functionality 
of subversion on the client side with local repositories/depot, to add 
many of the features Torvalds talk about.  I am not claiming anything 
about its quality or feasibility for others, as I am not a user, but it 
seems like a tool I would use rather than basic CVS/SVN.

http://svk.bestpractical.com/view/SVKForSubversion
http://perlcabal.org/~audreyt/svk-overview.png
http://svkbook.elixus.org/nightly/en/index.html
> Interesting the emphasis on git's being distributed... there is no
> 'central repository'.
>   

Well, as long as everybody looks at one of the repositories as the 
"official", it does really not make that much of a difference, does it?  
You can have distribution of repositories forming implicit branches, 
even with the more tool inherent concept of centralized repository you 
find in the SVN/SVK model.

-- 
Bjørn