Subversion

Paul Lussier p.lussier at comcast.net
Tue Dec 21 16:09:00 EST 2004


In a message dated: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 14:34:55 EST
Bill Sconce said:

>On Thu, 16 Dec 2004 11:25:44 -0500
>Fred <puissante at biz.puissante.com> wrote:
>
>> Speaking of Subversion, I'd love to hear from those who use it on a
>> regular basis what REAL (read: beyond the hype) advantages it has to
>> offer over CVS.

Hmm, I think I'm still the one with the most svn experience here
(though, I'm sure that will change over time :)

I've been using svn since 0.13 I think, at one point I was even the
release manager for the project (btw, don't ever ask me to be a release
manager for something, I suck at it :) so I've set up, torn down and
played with svn a fair bit in variety of (mostly straightforward)
configurations.

>The advantages (from my experience):  atomic commits and versioning,
>and the ability to easily move/rename/restructure the tree.

This are the obvious ones.  The not so obvious ones are:

 - uses APR as the networking work horse
   This is a major improvement over CVS for a variety of reasons:

    - the networking code is well known by a wide group of people

    - it is part of the fundamental design of svn, not an afterthought
      like with CVS

    - access control is something which can be quite fine grained and is
      as flexible as apache access control.  It can be as simple as an
      htpasswd file or as complicated as deferring to a pam module or
      kerberos credentials.

   - You get Web/DAV access for free.

 - VERSIONING OF SYMBOLIC LINKS!
   (this is apparently new since I left the project)

 - Branching and tagging are cheap (constant time) operations

 - Choice of database or plain-file repository implementations


>Limitation on my recommendations:  only small developer communities
>(three developers maximum so far);

huh?  How do you figure?  The svn project itself has at least 30 active
developers.  The GNOME and Samba projects are both using svn, and I
believe Apache is as well.  Subversion is by no means limited to small
development communities.

> Subverison is NOT BitKeeper - that is, there are differing design
> approaches between something like Subversion and something like
> BitKeeper or Arch, particularly with respect to how you want to handle
> merging.

This is very true, but if you're used to CVS and not overly familiar
with BK or arch, then this isn't a problem.  Both of those take a
completely opposite approach to revision control.  BK fits the Linux
development model very well, but there aren't a lot of projects which
fit that model as well.  Most projects are centralized by nature,
therefore, the svn and cvs approach works better.

>(I've also used a bunch of other version-control systems, including some
>that are unnameable on this list.)  Subversion has been the best so far.

Same here.  I love Subversion.  It's quick, simple, stable, and flexible
as all get-out!

Seeya,
Paul
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