From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Nov 7 23:30:22 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1101216A4CE for ; Sun, 7 Nov 2004 23:30:22 +0000 (GMT) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [204.156.12.50]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 88F8843D49 for ; Sun, 7 Nov 2004 23:30:21 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Received: from fledge.watson.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by fledge.watson.org (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id iA7NTIZB040161; Sun, 7 Nov 2004 18:29:18 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Received: from localhost (robert@localhost)iA7NTIXk040158; Sun, 7 Nov 2004 23:29:18 GMT (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 23:29:18 +0000 (GMT) From: Robert Watson X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: Samuel Tardieu In-Reply-To: <87mzxtvaza.fsf@beeblebrox.rfc1149.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD 6.0 and onwards X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2004 23:30:22 -0000 On 7 Nov 2004, Samuel Tardieu wrote: > >>>>> "PHK" == Poul-Henning Kamp writes: > > PHK> For better or worse, we're stuck with CVS for the forseeable > PHK> future and there are so many other ways to better use the huge > PHK> amount of developer time it would cost to replace it. > > I've never proposed to replace CVS with anything else. I proposed to > replace Perforce by GNU Arch. It's worth pointing out that it's taken several years for Perforce to get a useful level of acceptance by FreeBSD developers, who are frequently quite set in their ways ("if it's not broke, let me get on with my coding") :-). However, it's fairly easy to do some useful experimentation to demonstrate that it's a useful substitute. A first thing to try is to use it for ones own work: set up a regular import from CVS bringing in FreeBSD.org changes as vendor branches, then maintain your own work relative to it (perhaps you are already doing this?). This will make sure that the arch mechanisms are up to the non-trivial load of tracking FreeBSD. After that, it would be useful to post about the useful results -- i.e., "this worked really well -- the following were very easy to do, I used branches and merged between them, tracking FreeBSD daily on branches", etc. You might already be doing this -- if so, you should say so :-). Then we should see about whether there are FreeBSD developers who recognize the benefit of arch sufficiently to give it a spin using a repository and see how well it works for them. I.e., host some sub-project out of arch with a few developers and make sure all is well -- see what rough edges annoy, and which don't. The noticeable annoyances in Perforce are things like the lack of offline operation and non-standard patch format, for example. I think the FreeBSD world is open to a new SCM, or things like Perforce, Subversion, and Arch wouldn't keep coming up. But I think there's yet to be shown a real alternative to CVS that's worth investing the thousands of man hours (yes, thousands) necessary to move over. It's obvious Perforce hasn't provided sufficient motivation to move to it as a primary mechanism, but that it has proven useful enough that a lot of the mainstream developers use it as a tool to manage works-in-progress. The path there was pretty hard, so anticipating similar resistence to alternatives is probably realistic :-). Robert N M Watson FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Projects robert@fledge.watson.org Principal Research Scientist, McAfee Research