From: John Joyce <dangerwillrobinsondanger@...>
Date: 2007-04-05T23:57:11+09:00
Subject: Re: Why SVN?

Believing that any information medium is infallable? Plain foolish.
Paper?
Magnetic tape?
Optical media?
Stone tablets?
Oil paint?

Software works on at least a few of these.
Software also operates under Murphy's law.
If you want a modicum of reliability, do like the military: multiple  
redundancy!
That means use Raid Mirroring, on-site + off-site, use multiple systems?
Or best of all: don't be overly concerned about it. Accept the fact  
that some versions saved will be corrupted and none will last  
forever. Be realistic and plan for contingencies, but don't freak out  
when they happen.

On Apr 5, 2007, at 11:07 PM, Avdi Grimm wrote:

> On 4/4/07, Ryan Davis <ryand-ruby@zenspider.com> wrote:
>> backups. I simply can't say that about much of any other VCS out
>> there (except the nice stable old ones, like CVS).
>
> Speaking as someone who was tasked with setting up and administering a
> CVS server for a small team a couple years ago:
>
> AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.  CVS stable?  Trust CVS with your data?   
> That's rich.
>
> I'm not saying any other system is necessarily better; but treating
> CVS as some kind of gold standard of reliability is hilarious.  We're
> talking about a system that can't even guarantee atomic commits.  And
> for which maintenance releases sometimes randomly break major features
> and have to be manually patched.  And which requires having a sysadmin
> (or a knowledgeable user) around to periodically clean up orphan
> lockfiles which break the repository.
>
> The only thing CVS has going for it is that it is simple,
> comparatively speaking.  And often that's the most important
> consideration.  But it's only stable and reliable in comparison to
> Visual Source Safe.
>
> -- 
> Avdi
>