[svlug] Preventing a Revision Control Flamewar

[Chris Miller]

Tom Pilot wrote:
> Ive seen flamewars in the past about source control.. see below the youtube of Linus Torvalds The Dork thinking he is god almighty, going to Google and telling them, and all others who tune in,  that they are all idiots and stupid for using CVS and perforce... AND THEY LET HIM. If I was there I would boot him out of the room or at least call him on being an asswipe. So he wrote a buggy kernel some years ago - so freaking what - so many other people used CVS and perforce to add to "his" linux wonderful things. I dont understand why people make him out the god he pretends to be and let him be so disrespectful to them. They need to recheck their spine.
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8

Heh, I suppose everyone is entitled to their own opinion.  I'm all for 
letting them voice that opinion, even if it includes such phrases as 
"you should be doing X" - the moment someone tries forcing that opinion 
into reality onto other people it's no longer an opinion and no longer okay.

I personally think that each version control tool has its own strengths 
and weaknesses.  CVS is aging, and without sufficient binary diff 
storage to make it suitable for some projects.  But it's also highly 
compatible since there's a CVS client for nearly every OS.

Subversion (which I use) has good binary diff handling for excellent 
compression of binary files, which is absolutely essential for some 
projects which deal with binary data.  It's also nearly ubiquitous, with 
wide support for many platforms.

Perforce (IMHO) beats SVN, but its price tag is something to consider 
when selecting a VCS.

Of all the DVCS, I'm partial to Hg, but I also have great respect for 
bzr (which Ubuntu uses with great success).  I haven't personally tried 
many of the DVCS variants, but I hear they're good.

So to me a VCS is like a specialized tool, each one being a different 
kind of tool.  Sort of like a bunch of wrenches.  You might need a 
1/16th inch wrench, but at the end of the day they just torque things.

I was trying to avoid a flamewar about which wrench works best - they 
all do, IMHO, it just depends on the nut.