From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2007-03-13T09:05:42+09:00
Subject: Re: Why SVN?

On Mar 12, 2007, at 6:13 PM, Jeremy Tregunna wrote:

> On 12-Mar-07, at 7:07 PM, Rob Sanheim wrote:
>
>> On 3/12/07, Tanner Burson <tanner.burson@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> This is going a bit OT for ruby-talk, but I'll bite.
>>>
>>> I work from several different machines, in several different  
>>> locations,
>>> including from a laptop that is often disconnected from the  
>>> internet.  It's
>>> extremely useful for me to be able to record changes, branch,  
>>> work, in my
>>> normal manner, without worrying about the fact that when I DO get a
>>> connection all my changes will show up as one big lump.  So I use  
>>> Darcs over
>>> SSH.  It gives me a full, functional repository with "commits" as  
>>> I need
>>> them, without being connected.  Then when I get back to  
>>> civilization I can
>>> push all my changes back to my main repo and be good to go, SVN  
>>> can't give
>>> me that kind of work flow, so I've moved away from it.  (I'm  
>>> aware of SVK,
>>> but never could get it working well on linux/mac/and windows)
>>>
>>> At work, where I work from a single workstation, always connected  
>>> to the
>>> network, I use SVN, because it fits the environment better.  Use  
>>> the tool
>>> that fits the job, and move on.
>>
>> Is this the only real compelling reason to switch to Darcs or  
>> similiar
>> alternatives?   For me I'm never off the net long enough for the
>> centralized repository in svn to become a problem.  Even when I'm
>> working from a laptop most of the day, I'll have free wifi available
>> somewhere to sync up.
>
> The ability to cherry pick patches is also a real benefit.

Is it, really?  I'm not trying to be combative, I'm just wondering  
how often that comes up.

It sounds darn cool to the geek in me, but I find myself wondering if  
it happens a lot.  I guess I can envision a few specialized scenarios  
where it could be handy, but I really don't feel I would use it much  
for mainstream software.

For example, I really doubt there are many patches to Ruby I want to  
skip out on.

James Edward Gray II