[Opensim-dev] to branch or to break?

[Sean Dague]

On Fri, Nov 02, 2007 at 10:13:07AM +0100, Anders Arnholm wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 02, 2007 at 08:51:17AM +0100, Stefan Andersson wrote:
> 
> > > One of the things that might help here would be to look into a
> > > distributed source control system like mercurial. That would make it
> > Distributed source control seems promising; anybody here has real
> > experience in working on a 15-dev project with it?

My personal experience has been with ~ 5 active trees on a source base
(changes coming in daily off those).  It take a little getting used to
such a model, but I think it may help.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Betterexplained/~3/170014927/
is the best explaination I've seen out there on the whole model.  They
do use mercurial for their example.

The Linux kernel works on git (it and mercurial are roughly the same
functionally, but mercurial has an easier interface), there are at least
30 active trees being merged on a regular basis.  You can hear it from
the horses mouth here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8

> What is the big difference between mercurial and subversion? Subversions
> works quite well even is this enviroment i think.
> 
> > My immediate black hat reaction is that I don't buy the 'merging is
> > easier' bit at all. Diff is still Diff. Also, I'd say that it even
> 
> An bigg diff is a big diff and that til stay an big diff. Big diffs are
> loot for stuff st undersand and that will be hard how ever you do it.
> The keep to keep it workign is merge often, either to the exprimental
> brana or into the developemt stream.

I used to think this as well.  Then I started using hg a lot, and
realized that I actually had a chance of merging correctly with hg
(mercurial).  More importantly, you get to try the merge in your tree

3 way merge has come a long way, it is really better in a distributed
svn environment.

> > re-re-merged into the official branch, but maybe it's just me not
> > having any experience with it.
> 
> I have worked in many enviroment from rcs, cvs, subversion to clear
> case. All have there nifty stuff and there problems.

None of those are distributed environments. :)  Distributed SCM is a
relatively new idea that came out of building a tool that actually works
for Linux Kernel development (lots of distributed developers).  Bit
Keeper is the only proprietary offering in this space.

       -Sean

-- 
__________________________________________________________________

Sean Dague                                       Mid-Hudson Valley
sean at dague dot net                            Linux Users Group
http://dague.net                                 http://mhvlug.org

There is no silver bullet.  Plus, werewolves make better neighbors
than zombies, and they tend to keep the vampire population down.
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