From: Shugo Maeda <shugo@...>
Date: 2005-07-01T09:29:32+09:00
Subject: Re: Subversion

Hi,

Eric Hodel wrote:
> While CVS has problems of the security nature, it seems to be 
> relatively impossible to break a CVS checkout.  I've found it rather 
> easy to break a SVN checkout.  I'm also scared of all the checkout 
> corruption problems in SVN.  I seem to have run into them on several 
> occasions.  (You can find them here: http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/
> trunk/CHANGES)

I admit that Subversion is not better than CVS in all points.
But I'll backup the repository by `svnadmin dump', so don't be so
scared. Furthermore, I'm managing 6 projects by Subversion, but not
experienced a corruption yet on enviroments set permissions properly.

>> lithium.ruby-lang.org (the host for the development of ruby) was
>> upgraded to Debian sarge, and it has an official package of  Subversion.
> 
> 
> Which version of subversion?
> 
> There are some dramatic improvements in subversion 1.2.0 that make 
> things much nicer to work with (svn log --limit, for one).

The version of subversion on Debian sarge is 1.1.4:(

>> It's time to migrate to Subversion, isn't it?
> 
> 
> I don't see what it would gain over CVS for ruby.  You lose the  ability
> to easily grep your checkout.  "grep -r foo" becomes "grep -r  foo |
> grep -v svn" due to the extra checkout in the .svn directories.

I'm using zsh and "grep foo **/*(.)" or "grep foo **/*.rb" etc....

> I wouldn't say subversion is better yet, just different.

I think good points of Subversion are:

: Not based on single file
    CVS is based on single file, and doesn't support rename and removal
    well.  Subversion gives a revision to changes in all related changes
    per commit, so it's easy to track changes.
: Security
    Subversion is not perfect, but more secure than CVS.
    We can use HTTPS and basic auth, so committers doesn't need
    Unix accounts any more, and extra ports like pserver are not
    necessary.
: Easy to maintain
    The complexity of loginfo of CVS is my headache. (I think it's also
    eban's headache)
    post-commit of Subversion and `svnadmin dump' is easy to use.
    `svnadmin dump' also supports incemental backup.
: Trac
    Trac (http://www.edgewall.com/trac/) is an issue tracking system.
    Trac and Subversion are good friends. We can close a bug just to
    write a ticket number in a commit log like:

      fixed something. (closes #1234)

    Trac has also a good repository browser for Subversion.
    Please see http://dev.rubyonrails.com/ for example.

Shugo