If SVN merges suck, what do we replace SVN with?

[Robert Kaye]

There seems to be a growing dislike of SVN here at MusicBrainz these  
days. We've got some code in Bazaar. Some people are using Git front  
ends to our SVN repo. Mercurial sounds nice too.

We've got a *lot* of merges coming up, so having something that doesnt  
suck at merges would be nice

What should we do?

/me ducks and runs away

--

--ruaok      Somewhere in Texas a village is *still* missing its idiot.

Robert Kaye     --     rob@...     --    http://mayhem-chaos.net



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[Oliver Charles-2]

Oh-er :P

Well, at the moment I'm the Git (teehee) user - maintaining a separate
git repository at GitHub [1] for my work, and periodically pushing
back to our main Subversion repositories using git-svn.

My reasons for using git are mainly because I'm doing so much work in
many different areas on my musicbrainz-catalyst branch, that I found
myself getting lost or sidetracked as I worked. Now that I'm on git
I've been branching and merging like crazy (locally), and I've found
it really helps me to keep a clear head. Along with this, I just love
some of Gits other tools - automatic support for paging in git
diff/git log and pretty colors, git add --interactive, and a few other
things.

So yes, I suppose me wantig to switch to Git is only based on selfish
reasons at the moment.

But I'm not so fussed about moving to Git... as I am just getting away
from Subversion. My branch, amongst other things, is their to help
other people start developing - and if this does happen (which I
really hope it does, and will be encouraging it near the time :)) -
organising this with patches or whatever is going to be a nightmare.

Having a DVCS would make this much more flexible, anyone can grab the
code and do work, with a history - and then one of the more
experienced developers can just clone their work, review it, merge it
in to the master branch, and then publish it on dvcs.musicbrainz.org.

As far as options go, I'm aware of these 3: Git, Mercurial, and
Bazaar. Listed in my order of personal preference :) Git is great, in
my books, though it has a lot of hatred amongst the community (from
what I can tell!) so might not be the best choice. It's cross-platform
support isn't quite there either yet [2].

Mercurial, though I haven't used it for a while, apparently can do
pretty much everything Git can - so I'd be happy to go with that too.

Bazaar I know nothing of, and can't comment - though I know Lukas
enjoys that (right?)

- Ollie

p.s. Vim > * ;)

[1] http://github.com/cycles/musicbrainz-catalyst
[2] http://faux.uwcs.co.uk/msysvista64.png

On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 7:13 PM, Robert Kaye <rob@...> wrote:

> There seems to be a growing dislike of SVN here at MusicBrainz these
> days. We've got some code in Bazaar. Some people are using Git front
> ends to our SVN repo. Mercurial sounds nice too.
>
> We've got a *lot* of merges coming up, so having something that doesnt
> suck at merges would be nice
>
> What should we do?
>
> /me ducks and runs away
>
> --
>
> --ruaok      Somewhere in Texas a village is *still* missing its idiot.
>
> Robert Kaye     --     rob@...     --    http://mayhem-chaos.net
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> MusicBrainz-devel mailing list
> MusicBrainz-devel@...
> http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-devel
>

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[Matthias Friedrich]

On Friday, 2008-09-26, Robert Kaye wrote:
> There seems to be a growing dislike of SVN here at MusicBrainz these  
> days. We've got some code in Bazaar. Some people are using Git front  
> ends to our SVN repo. Mercurial sounds nice too.

Let's please keep in mind that Subversion is pretty standard these
days and many developers have become used to it. Switching to some new
and cool DVCS would raise the bar for contributions again, no matter
how easy they are to use. 80% of all developers don't need a DVCS and
probably never will. Apart from that MB isn't the Linux kernel with that
many contributors.

Personally, I'd be happy to switch my projects over to Mercurial, but I
don't like bzr much and hate git for various reasons. Judging from all
that buzz in the blogs other people have different preferences. Not to
mention that tool support (for those who need it) isn't quite there yet.

[...]
> What should we do?

Nothing.

Cheers,
  Matthias

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[Aurélien Mino-2]

On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 10:34 PM, Matthias Friedrich <matt@...> wrote:

On Friday, 2008-09-26, Robert Kaye wrote:
> There seems to be a growing dislike of SVN here at MusicBrainz these
> days. We've got some code in Bazaar. Some people are using Git front
> ends to our SVN repo. Mercurial sounds nice too.

Let's please keep in mind that Subversion is pretty standard these
days and many developers have become used to it. Switching to some new
and cool DVCS would raise the bar for contributions again, no matter
how easy they are to use. 80% of all developers don't need a DVCS and
probably never will. Apart from that MB isn't the Linux kernel with that
many contributors.

Sure, there aren't so many contributors.
But the mb server is undergoing some major changes, and most will be in separate branches,
developed by different people.
So here DVCS can be of a great help.

I think Rob was mainly thinking about mb_server, other projects can probably stay with SVN.

I'd be happy with either Mercurial or Bazaar, but I dislike git.

- Aurélien

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[Lukáš Lalinský]

On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 8:13 PM, Robert Kaye <rob@...> wrote:
> There seems to be a growing dislike of SVN here at MusicBrainz these
> days. We've got some code in Bazaar. Some people are using Git front
> ends to our SVN repo. Mercurial sounds nice too.
>
> We've got a *lot* of merges coming up, so having something that doesnt
> suck at merges would be nice
>
> What should we do?

Upgrade to Subversion 1.5.

Lukas

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[Kuno Woudt-2]

On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 11:13:32AM -0700, Robert Kaye wrote:
> There seems to be a growing dislike of SVN here at MusicBrainz these  
> days. We've got some code in Bazaar. Some people are using Git front  
> ends to our SVN repo. Mercurial sounds nice too.
>
> We've got a *lot* of merges coming up, so having something that doesnt  
> suck at merges would be nice

Have you looked at specific merge tools?  I'm not very familiar with
them, but they might help.  Araxis merge is regarded as the best tool
for this according to one or two people i've spoken about this subject,
http://www.araxis.com/merge/index.html.  If you are a free software
zealot, meld may be a reasonable substitute
(http://meld.sourceforge.net/).  

-- kuno.
ps.  regarding RCS, I like and use bzr a lot.  (But I don't do much
musicbrainz related coding, so that's not terribly relevant ;)


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[Oliver Charles-2]

On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 8:59 AM, Lukáš Lalinský <lalinsky@...> wrote:
> Upgrade to Subversion 1.5.

What new features does 1.5 add, and what are we running atm? Would
just like to have a bit more info about 1.5 :)

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[Lukáš Lalinský]

On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 2:03 PM, Oliver Charles
<oliver.g.charles@...> wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 8:59 AM, Lukáš Lalinský <lalinsky@...> wrote:
>> Upgrade to Subversion 1.5.
>
> What new features does 1.5 add, and what are we running atm? Would
> just like to have a bit more info about 1.5 :)

It supports merge tracking (kind of). We are currently running 1.4.<something>.

(I have also a selfish reason, which is that I still can use bzr with
bzr-svn, as it will make bzr merges look like native svn 1.5 merges.)

Lukas

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[Oliver Charles-2]

> (I have also a selfish reason, which is that I still can use bzr with
> bzr-svn, as it will make bzr merges look like native svn 1.5 merges.)

Right, but if you want to keep managing source with Bazaar, why not
make the full switch? :)

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[Lukáš Lalinský]

On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 4:58 PM, Oliver Charles
<oliver.g.charles@...> wrote:
>> (I have also a selfish reason, which is that I still can use bzr with
>> bzr-svn, as it will make bzr merges look like native svn 1.5 merges.)
>
> Right, but if you want to keep managing source with Bazaar, why not
> make the full switch? :)

Because everybody knows svn.

Lukas

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[George Hartzell-2]

Aurélien Mino writes:
 > On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 10:34 PM, Matthias Friedrich <matt@...> wrote:
 >
 > > On Friday, 2008-09-26, Robert Kaye wrote:
 > > > There seems to be a growing dislike of SVN here at MusicBrainz these
 > > > days. We've got some code in Bazaar. Some people are using Git front
 > > > ends to our SVN repo. Mercurial sounds nice too.
 > >
 > > Let's please keep in mind that Subversion is pretty standard these
 > > days and many developers have become used to it. Switching to some new
 > > and cool DVCS would raise the bar for contributions again, no matter
 > > how easy they are to use. 80% of all developers don't need a DVCS and
 > > probably never will. Apart from that MB isn't the Linux kernel with that
 > > many contributors.
 > >
 >
 > Sure, there aren't so many contributors.
 > But the mb server is undergoing some major changes, and most will be in
 > separate branches,
 > developed by different people.
 > So here DVCS can be of a great help.
 >
 > I think Rob was mainly thinking about mb_server, other projects can probably
 > stay with SVN.
 >
 > I'd be happy with either Mercurial or Bazaar, but I dislike git.
 >

Another option that I've had success with is to use svk.  This allows
the repository to be maintained in Subversion, with all of its tools
and traditions, while simultaneously supporting individual developers
who want/need to use a distributed approach.

g.

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[Alex Dupuy]

> (I have also a selfish reason, which is that I still can use bzr with
> bzr-svn, as it will make bzr merges look like native svn 1.5 merges.)


Right, but if you want to keep managing source with Bazaar, why not
make the full switch? :)

Another reason for continuing to use svn is that those who prefer git can use git-svn, and those who prefer bzr can use bzr-svn, and perhaps even those who prefer SVK can use that - only Mercurial fans are left in the cold.  This avoids contention about which is the best DVCS to use.

@alex

[Oliver Charles-2]

Ok, this thread looks like it could turn stale soon - so I've had a
look at what people have mentioned in a quick vote-like fashion. These
are only guestimates though, but I've got them down best I can

Keep Subversion: 2
Git: 1
Mercurial: 3
Bazaar: 3
Svk: 1

Any more thoughts?

On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 6:56 PM, George Hartzell <hartzell@...> wrote:

> Aurélien Mino writes:
>  > On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 10:34 PM, Matthias Friedrich <matt@...> wrote:
>  >
>  > > On Friday, 2008-09-26, Robert Kaye wrote:
>  > > > There seems to be a growing dislike of SVN here at MusicBrainz these
>  > > > days. We've got some code in Bazaar. Some people are using Git front
>  > > > ends to our SVN repo. Mercurial sounds nice too.
>  > >
>  > > Let's please keep in mind that Subversion is pretty standard these
>  > > days and many developers have become used to it. Switching to some new
>  > > and cool DVCS would raise the bar for contributions again, no matter
>  > > how easy they are to use. 80% of all developers don't need a DVCS and
>  > > probably never will. Apart from that MB isn't the Linux kernel with that
>  > > many contributors.
>  > >
>  >
>  > Sure, there aren't so many contributors.
>  > But the mb server is undergoing some major changes, and most will be in
>  > separate branches,
>  > developed by different people.
>  > So here DVCS can be of a great help.
>  >
>  > I think Rob was mainly thinking about mb_server, other projects can probably
>  > stay with SVN.
>  >
>  > I'd be happy with either Mercurial or Bazaar, but I dislike git.
>  >
>
> Another option that I've had success with is to use svk.  This allows
> the repository to be maintained in Subversion, with all of its tools
> and traditions, while simultaneously supporting individual developers
> who want/need to use a distributed approach.
>
> g.
>
> _______________________________________________
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> http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-devel
>

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[Robert Kaye]

On Sep 27, 2008, at 12:59 AM, Lukáš Lalinský wrote:
> Upgrade to Subversion 1.5.

The downtime we had on Scooby last thursday was related to this -- the  
packages on this catch-all machine are a bit of a complicated mess and  
one mis-step took out the whole machine. But, I know that Dave cleared  
up some issues relating to one pain in the ass: SQLite. Now that Trac  
uses Mysql things should be simpler. I'll ping Dave again on getting  
to SVN 1.5.

--

--ruaok      Somewhere in Texas a village is *still* missing its idiot.

Robert Kaye     --     rob@...     --    http://mayhem-chaos.net


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