>>>> "TS" == Tim Starling
<ts4294967296(a)hotmail.com> writes:
TS> However, I'm certainly not doing new features at the moment --
TS> it's been far too long since the branches were last merged, so
TS> I'm working on cleaning up the unstable branch, not
TS> optimisation.
So, this is kind of a non-sequitur, and a response to a really old
post, and pretty much a commercial for some good Free Software. But,
anyways...
I've noticed that it's really hard keeping unstable and stable in
synch. I know that that's hard -- doing any branching and merging in
CVS is hard.
I just want to put the flea in anybody who's listening's ear about GNU
arch.
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnu-arch/
http://gnuarch.org/bin/view/Main/WhyArch
Arch has some features that are really great for distributed
development teams like MediaWiki's:
* Distributed repositories: individual developers can have their own
repositories, so they can do incremental version control, and then
push or pull stuff from a central repository.
* Pull-based distribution: few people have to have write access to the
central repository. A source monitor can pick and choose changes
from remote repositories. In other words, no more patch files.
* Extremely graceful branching and merging: Branching and merging in
arch is a delight. It works. It really works. Conflicts are rare and
easy to resolve. Repeated merges (merging between branches more than
once) is handled automatically and cleanly.
* Project-based change management: versioning is done by the project
directory, not by individual files. (You can check in individual
files if you want to, though.)
* Automated Changelog generation: arch can make and version GNU-style
changelogs automatically.
* Multiple access protocols: arch can use HTTP, WebDAV, sftp, ftp,
NFS, and some other protocols for remote access (read-only or
read-write). A combination of sftp (for developers needing write
access) and HTTP (for people needing only read access) works great
with SourceForge.
arch is stable software, written in C (old versions were shell +
utils, but it's all C now).
MediaWiki is the first project I've worked on using CVS in over a
year. I've been using arch since then, and I have to tell you: CVS is
really painful after spending time with arch. I keep a private arch
repository for Wikitravel-specific changes to MediaWiki.
I realize that changing version control systems probably isn't at the
top of anyone's TODO list. I just want to put it out there that
there's an easier and cleaner tool than CVS.
~ESP
--
Evan Prodromou <evan(a)wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel -
http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide