[boost] Respecting a projects toolchain decisions (was Re: [context] new version - support for Win64)

Subject: [boost] Respecting a projects toolchain decisions (was Re: [context] new version - support for Win64)
From: Lars Viklund (zao_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-12-18 11:43:19

>>> On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 9:34 PM, Lars Viklund<zao_at_[hidden]>  wrote:
>>>> Maybe you can adapt to the conventions of the real world, or use
>>>> git-svn?

>> On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 22:19, Dean Michael Berris
>> <mikhailberis_at_[hidden]>  wrote:
>>> Which real world are you talking about, the one that I live in where
>>> nobody uses SVN anymore and instead use Git for large open source
>>> development projects? :)

>Am 18.12.2010 09:47, schrieb Scott McMurray:
>> Probably the "large commercial software company" world where the
>> source control is so bad that branches get merged once every two weeks
>> at best, and all checkins are blocked for over 24 hours when they do,
>> so multiple releases get worked on in the same branch just to avoid
>> the merging headaches.

On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 03:46:30PM +0100, Oliver Kowalke wrote:
>I think we should stop this talk - if desired you can start a new thread
>with this topic.

I apologise if the term "real world" was misunderstood, but I'm rather
tired of when people come in from the outside, implying or demanding
that a project should change their version control, build system or
favourite bikeshed colour, just because they are used to something else
(possibly "better") from elsewhere.

As for version control, what does it matter if Boost uses Subversion,
when you as a DVCS user can trivially use git-svn [1] to interop against
the repository (in this case, the sandbox). You get to use your
favourite toy, without affecting the existing infrastructure in any way.

In the end, the version control you choose is rather tangential. As long
as it's sufficiently competent (which Subversion in my eyes is), you'll
survive.

Of course, you may propose constructive criticism and suggest migration
plans to other toolchains, with good arguments for why this is a good
thing. See the mythical 'Ryppl' project, which aims to componentise
Boost into a pile of Git repositories and some magical combination of
scripts and CMake, aimed at letting you track exactly the versions of
components you need.

Remember that no tool is isolated. Changing from Subversion to
<whatever> would result in many changes propagating to how test runners
are set up, rewriting of commit hooks, modifying Trac (if possible)
(although the SVN functionality is disabled there for now), requiring
adaptation of any entity out there that use Boost's repositories in any
way, including externals, build scripts, CI environments, etc.

And of course, having to have the mirrored Subversion repositories up
for years, as you can't really 'flag day' such things.

-- 
Lars Viklund | zao_at_[hidden]