Re: Moving to an alternate VCS

[Chris Jefferson <caj at cs dot york dot ac dot uk>]

Frank Ch. Eigler wrote:
> Steven Bosscher <stevenb@suse.de> writes:
>
>
> > > > We don't want a distributed system right now.
> > >
> > > You can close your eyes and pretend it isn't there.
> >
> > We want something that works similar to, but better than CVS.  [...]
> > [...] You seem to think that the world is a better place if everyone
> > goes to a distributed model.  We think we are working just fine now
> > without a distribited SCM system.  [...]
>
>
> That's not so clear.  I get the sense that many of the more fruitful
> contributors wrestle regularly with having multiple development
> streams of their own and having to merge between them and the master
> branches.  I'm not that fruitful, but I still tend to juggle three or
> four checkouts, which could more profitably be represented as first
> class local branches in a distributed system.
I'm not sure how much my opinion counts in these issues, but I thought I 
would join in...

I have recently been submitting some small amounts of code to 
libstdc++-v3, and have been finding it difficult to keep track of my own 
code, as I sometimes find myself with "code I've submitted and am 
waiting to go in", "code I'm going to submit soon" and "code which I'm 
just experimenting with". I imagine this a common situation for many 
people to find themselves in. I have been intending for a while to try 
using some other kind of code management system locally.

As someone who just started submitting code, I'd say for a beginner the 
most important features of the version control system are (in particular 
relating to CVS)

1) Make it easy to get multi-file patches in the correct format

2) Be reasonably clever about when patches get added to the server which 
are already added locally (in particular CVS doesn't like it much when a 
directory is added to the server which you already have locally, even if 
the contents are identical).

3) (perhaps less likely) aid "local branching", so it's easy to have a 
local "stable" and "unstable" branch, move code between the two and make 
patches from one or the other for submission against the "offical" tree.

I've about got these 3 points figured out myself now, but it did take a 
while, and CVS supplied in it's default state doesn't go out of its way 
to help...

Chris