Comments on: Version Control Techniques http://www.joshual.me.uk/2007/10/version-control-techniques/ Joshua Lock's Blog Wed, 04 Aug 2010 19:35:51 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: josh http://www.joshual.me.uk/2007/10/version-control-techniques/comment-page-1/#comment-8 josh Thu, 18 Oct 2007 10:54:37 +0000 http://www.joshual.me.uk/blog/?p=12#comment-8 Martin, you make a good point - there is no reason to limit myself to Subversion. I can see the pure DVCS approach being a problem in some scenarios though. * DVCSs seem to be less well supported on non-Linux OS's. Bazaar has a Windows installer but not a Mac on for example. * Server support; it's much easier to find a publicly hosted SVN repository for an open source project than anything else. A lot of web hosts provide subversion support nowadays too. * Pulling from SVN is much easier if you just want latest code, there's more to pulling from a DVCS as you probably don't want the entire change history just to build the latest code. So you have to know how to limit revision history etc. Thinking on it further the pure DVCS approach will probably work for me and my projects, so long as I can find a decent place to host a bzr repository. Martin, you make a good point - there is no reason to limit myself to Subversion. I can see the pure DVCS approach being a problem in some scenarios though.

* DVCSs seem to be less well supported on non-Linux OS’s. Bazaar has a Windows installer but not a Mac on for example.
* Server support; it’s much easier to find a publicly hosted SVN repository for an open source project than anything else. A lot of web hosts provide subversion support nowadays too.
* Pulling from SVN is much easier if you just want latest code, there’s more to pulling from a DVCS as you probably don’t want the entire change history just to build the latest code. So you have to know how to limit revision history etc.

Thinking on it further the pure DVCS approach will probably work for me and my projects, so long as I can find a decent place to host a bzr repository.

]]> By: MartinG http://www.joshual.me.uk/2007/10/version-control-techniques/comment-page-1/#comment-7 MartinG Thu, 18 Oct 2007 08:57:53 +0000 http://www.joshual.me.uk/blog/?p=12#comment-7 If you replace subversion in your model with DVCS, but still have a policy that it is the "main" repository that people push to when things are stable, what do you lose? Nothing that I can see. On the other hand what you gain is consistency (same tool used everywhere) and most likely better stability (git and bzrs svn integration are both less than perfect right now in my experience) To me it looks like you have defined a good set of working policies, but that's no reason to limit yourself to svn as the main repo. If you replace subversion in your model with DVCS, but still have a policy that it is the “main” repository that people push to when things are stable, what do you lose?

Nothing that I can see.

On the other hand what you gain is consistency (same tool used everywhere) and most likely better stability (git and bzrs svn integration are both less than perfect right now in my experience)

To me it looks like you have defined a good set of working policies, but that’s no reason to limit yourself to svn as the main repo.

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