On Thu, 22 Jan 2009, Tim Jenness wrote:
> > This sounds exactly like what we do at the moment, with the exception
> > that instead of a DVCS local repository, I store my local files in
> > some DSB-specific manner. From the point of view of the outside world
> > (or indeed from my point of view), what's the difference?
>
> but but but....
>
> I feel better committing my work to a version control system as I develop.
> The thought of having multiple versions of files scattered around the file
> system all in different states of development and having to remember what
> they were doing fills me with horror :-)
>
> The point of the DVCS is that you can do exactly what you do at the moment
> but with the version control system helping you do it. You are encouraged
> to have multiple branches on the go at once for all your experiments and
> it keeps the code safe and easily allows merges from the master repository
> as you go (So you don't ever get out of sync).
I think these are the key arguments for me. Having to hold off on commits
until "it's ready" always makes me uneasy, it also has the side-effect of
discouraging atomic commits, so a changeset is generally not very helpful
to look at when you forget quite why or when some change was made, it's
hidden amongst a batch of others.
This point may be more important for me as I work with other people's code
a lot, so understanding the changes is important.
Basically I see this as moving back to the old days when I had my own
repositories (not saying I was a good boy with those, quite often comments
were blank, but I didn't expect to share so the diffs and code comments
would generally do) and committed away without restraint, but now we can
also share the product. I expect you might still be using SDT for this
purpose.
One thing that worries me about a switch is how secure the local
repositories are. Clearly these need backing up, so I need to work out how
to keep the bare repositories on backed-up filesystems. There's also the
issue of thirdparty/vendor branches, where are those kept.
Peter.
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