Re: Darcs

From: Dan Chokola <dan@chokola.com>
Date: Jun 25, 2007, 04:44 UTC
Message-ID: <61e816970706242144y5dd07464ue6b06478a5920699@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.0.98.0706241657540.3593@woody.linux-foundation.org>

On 6/24/07, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:

Show 16 quoted lines

> On Sun, 24 Jun 2007, Dan Chokola wrote:
> >
> > What I have noticed is a lot of nitpicking, of which I'm guilty, too. The
> > issue Linus brought up about Darcs and versioning is not one I typically see
> > surface in real life. Users usually complain about some _release_ version
> > or, "I updated last week."
>
> Actually, in the kernel, we are getting quite a lot out of "git bisect",
> and people throw git SHA1's around to describe where they are, or a
> particular commit.
>
> Which never happened with BK.
>
> So I think that the _ability_ to name revisions easily across different
> uses is quite important, because it then drives behaviour.
>

I wholeheartedly agree it's important as far as the big picture of SCM is concerned. Though I will say that the kernel development is an extreme case, where there's a huge number of developers and incredibly fast development where matching features are needed from the SCM. And I love how Git is born out of this extreme case, as it leads to a lot of great features that often scale down, too. But some of them matter less to, say, a small, well-integrated team of 5 or 10 people. And an idealistic model like the one offered by Darcs might even work better there since corner cases don't show up often.

I'm spoiled by Git and the fact that it has these great abilities and features that set it apart, and I'd love everyone to use it. But I'd like people to know that many attributes of Git and other DSCMs don't differ all that much. (Please don't call me ugly and stupid. ;) And actually, this is something of a selling point, because it makes it Git seem cozy and familiar.

So, relating back to the original post, and extending on Linus' 'academic' analogy, Darcs is like a thesis project from university that proves how DSCM can be done scientifically. Git is grown-up Darcs that proves how DSCM can be done practically. The bottom line is the foundations of DSCM, cheap branching, easy merging, and the like, can be done very similarly in either Darcs or Git, so moving from one to the other leaves you with a largely familiar set of commands.

> Without it, you'll never notice you need it. With it, you start wondering
> how others handle it.
>

Git really does have a way of spoiling its users (I don't know how CVS/SVN users live), no argument here.

-Daniel "Puzzles" Chokola