[kwlug-disc] Is SVN good enough?

[Chris Frey]

On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 02:58:32PM -0400, Paul Nijjar wrote:
> 
> Given that the mailing list has been so quiet lately I thought I would
> stir things up a bit.

:-)


> How feasible do you think SVN would be at handling this "track and
> merge" process we want to do? Would we really be much better off with
> one of the cool new toys?

I used to be a CVS fan, and now that I'm a git fan, CVS (and SVN by
association) look like rickety towers that might fall over.

Merging is not really a native feature of CVS or SVN, to my mind, and
if you're doing that a lot, you might want to do some trial runs to
see which works better for you.

This also sounds like a task that you will be doing once in a while,
not everyday.  In that case, use what you normally use everyday for other
source code projects, otherwise your head will hurt every time you
have to relearn the commands.

And as much as it pains me, don't use git for this if you don't already
use it every day.  Git is fantastic in the long run, but the learning
curve is steep.

And lastly, it looks like Joomla uses SVN.  It may make sense to go with
that, so you can track their devel branches if you so choose later.
(Git can track SVN too as a side note.)

When using git, I find it very handy to have multiple branches with
various devel trees on it from external sources.  That way I can look at it
using local, familiar tools, and cherry pick specific patches if needed.


> If we go with a cool new toy, is Mercurial good enough? I know that
> git is more popular with the Linux crowd, but having good native
> Windows support is an asset because I want to move Windows source code
> to version control as well, and using a single VCS is a lot more
> appealing than using a mix. 

I've used Cygwin's version of git on windows and was quite happy.

- Chris