Subject: Re: Subversion developer: svn is for dumb people

From: David Brown <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2007 09:57:11 -0700

On Thu, Oct 18, 2007 at 07:25:36AM -0700, Steven Grimm wrote:

> I can't say he's completely wrong, especially about the 20/80% idea (though 
> I think "20%" is generous), but some of his specific arguments about DVCS 
> are on the bogus side. "Centralized systems encourage code reviews," for 
> one -- I challenge him to find a project with a more pervasive and 
> effective code-reviewing culture than the git project. I find code reviews 
> *harder* in a centralized system because you end up building external tools 
> to help people try out each other's changes.

The review comment is completely bogus.  Centralized systems, at least like
SVN and P4 encourage a check-it-in-deal-with-the-problems-later attitude.
The tool discourages you from trying out other's changes, whereas a DVCS
tends to have lots of little branches and easy migration between them.

I think this is less an issue of distributed or not, but more that branches
are just so expensive in most other revision control systems.  Whether that
is expensive in resource, or just in understanding what is going on (for
example, requiring users to track merge ancestors is rediculous).

David