FreeBSD Begins Switch to Subversion

An anonymous reader writes "The FreeBSD Project has begun the switch of its source code management system from CVS to Subversion. At this point in time, FreeBSD's developers are making changes to the base system in the Subversion repository. We have a replication system in place that exports our work to the legacy CVS tree on a continuous basis. People who are using our extensive CVS based distribution network (including anoncvs, CVSup, cvsweb, ftp) will not be interrupted by our work-in-progress. We are committed to maintaining the existing CVS based distribution system for at least the support lifetime of all existing 'stable' branches. Security and errata patches will continue to be made available in their usual CVS locations."

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Re:GIT?

[AKAImBatman]

GIT lost the version control war early on. Its focus on Linux development with little to no support for Windows and Mac made it unpopular. That's a situation that has changed (somewhat), but the stigma is still attached to it. Which is not really a problem. GIT was developed to meet the needs of the Linux Kernel Project. If it happens to meet the needs of other projects, great. If it doesn't, that's just as fine.

In any case, Mercurial [wikipedia.org] ended up being the "best of breed" solution. It offered all the features of the competing version control systems, was portable across platforms, had a significant toolchain appear practically overnight, and is used by HUGE OSS companies like Sun and Mozilla. I've used it in my own projects and have found that it is much easier and more dynamic than the classic, monolithic model of CVS.

Re:GIT?

[mTor]

GIT lost the version control war early on. Its focus on Linux development with little to no support for Windows and Mac made it unpopular. That's a situation that has changed (somewhat), but the stigma is still attached to it. Which is not really a problem. GIT was developed to meet the needs of the Linux Kernel Project. If it happens to meet the needs of other projects, great. If it doesn't, that's just as fine.

Huh? Git didn't have windows support very early on but very soon you could compile it with Cygwin. As for Mac support... it got it very quickly. In fact, I'm willing to claim that not having very early Win support didn't do anything to adoption rate. Target audience were Linux hackers so having support for various other systems wouldn't have done much at all.

As for "changed (somewhat)", what do you mean somewhat? I use Git daily on my Mac laptop and have even used it under Vista without any issues.

Git is HUGE these days. Rails project, for example, has completely switched to Git. Same is happening to Pythin community as more and more things are moving to places like GitHub (which is amazing btw). Also, Google Code now provides Git repos for almost ALL of the projects.

As for Hg, it's lost the war. Git has won. If you want proof, try some searches for "git tutorial" and "mercurial tutorial" and see who's winning. Searches with " tutorial" appeneded are great because they indicate adoption rate and indicate that there are people out there who are trying to get started.

in short, Git has already won and expect it to be the biggest source code versioning system in less than two years from now.

Re:dead...

[PotatoFarmer]

I've never used Mercurial before, so I don't know if the comparison fits exactly, but the branch/merge style of development you've described can be done very easily within CVS and SVN. That sort of thing is much cleaner in SVN as you're branching from a base repository revision rather than from a tag that can be moved/reapplied, but it's possible if you're careful in CVS as well. From there, it comes down to personal preference with regard to whatever merge tool you care to use.

I greatly prefer that style of development myself, as it tends to keep the trunk much cleaner, and allows a code reviewer to concentrate on specific changes in a given branch rather than worrying about the stability of the codebase as a whole. Of course, old branches can be a bitch to merge if you've got really active development, but there's probably no way around that no matter what tools you're using.

Re:GIT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian's popcon agrees with this synopsis.

Basically, in the first year or so of the "distributed SCM revolution" in 2005, Mercurial was in the lead. However in mid 2006 git passed it by, and took off exponentially. At the moment Mercurial usage is about half that of git. It looks like within a year or so git will pass rcs and soon after that cvs, to become the second most popular scm after svn.

It seems that in general, Mercurial is chosen by comities (Solaris, Mozilla etc.) as it offends the least number of people due to its earlier better windows support. However, in projects run by a single benevolent dictator (like Wine, linux kernel and X.org) git tends to win due to its better technology and the lesser importance of political issues. (The fact that Linus originally wrote git will definitely hold back its usage in non-linux OS's due to politics. I can't see Microsoft using it, for example.)

Re:GIT?

[AKAImBatman]

If you go by Debian's popcon, Subversion has already kicked both our asses and we should all go home:

http://people.debian.org/~igloo/popcon-graphs/index.php?packages=darcs%2Cgit-core%2Cmercurial%2Cbzr%2Csubversion%2C+cvs&show_installed=on&want_legend=on&want_ticks=on&from_date=2003-10-01&to_date=&hlght_date=&date_fmt=%25Y-%25m&beenhere=1 [debian.org]

Re:GIT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Use quotes for statistics purposes? FAIL!

To give an example, this will be found with "git tutorial" in quotes:

"Click here for a git tutorial!"

However, it's rather clunky english. This sounds much better...

"Click here for a tutorial on mercurial" ...but won't be found with "mercurial tutorial".

Statistics != SEO != Adwords

Re:dead...

[Jack9]

Everyone we hire is either already experienced with SVN or picks it up in about 5 minutes. I don't know what the OP is smoking.

SVN is better for FreeBSD development

[bigsmoke]

Contrary to Linux, FreeBSD uses a centralized development methodology which SVN is very well-suited for. (Now, if only they hurry up with the stable release of their merge-tracking, I could say that Subversion is perfect for a centralized development model.)

Then, there's the obvious licensing issue. GIT is released under the GPL, which, I'd guess, is a little too restrictive for BSD-style people. :P

Re:SVN is better for FreeBSD development

[Lost+Found]

Isn't GCC under the GPL as well? :p