SCM choices (was: Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Gentoo infra backups)

[Chris Gianelloni]

On Wed, 2007-03-28 at 12:30 +0200, Marijn Schouten (hkBst) wrote:
> I've been reading some SCM comparisons and there are three systems which I think are the best
> candidates for moving to: git, mercurial and darcs. These are the three fastest and most capable
> SCMs. Git is still the fastest but mercurial and darcs are not far behind. Darcs has the best
> merging capabilities probably due to its being based on a solid mathematical foundation; patch algebra.

Please, everyone, go back and read the actual *facts* that were
discovered using copies of *our* repositories before going around using
data from outside sources.  Unless you're willing to spend the time to
*prove* that some other SCM is faster/better than CVS and actually works
*with our repositories* properly, then there's no point in discussing
this *yet again* on the list.

Remember that when this was investigated last summer, *none* of the
alternate SCMs were really viable for us, with Subversion being the
least likely to suck.  I'm sure things might have changed a bit since
then, but one of the major things we noticed from the study was that our
findings on *our* data set didn't really match the FUD/evangelism that
was being spouted by proponents of other SCMs.

Picking a SCM is *not* a religious or political move.  It should be done
entirely for technical reasons.

If you want to bring this back up, I ask you to have the data to back it
up.  Otherwise, we really don't need to discuss it since everybody is
going to have differing opinions based on nothing but anecdotes and here
say.  We get enough of that around here.  Let's try to stick to facts
and reproducible data.

Thanks, 

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation