From: Joel Dice Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2006 23:35:36 GMT Subject: Re: Subversion-style incrementing revision numbers Message-ID: In-Reply-To: On Tue, 19 Sep 2006, Linus Torvalds wrote: > On Wed, 20 Sep 2006, Petr Baudis wrote: >> This is actually exactly how SVN revision numbering works. There's just >> a single number (no '1.') and it indeed jumps randomly if you have >> several concurrent branches in your (ok, Linus does not have any, just >> someone's) repository. > > Oh, ok, if it's just a single numbering, then that's easy to do. It won't > _mean_ anything, and you're seriously screwed if you ever merge anything > else (or use a git that doesn't update the refcache or whatever), but it > is simple and stable within a single repo. Well, what it means is "this is the order in which commits were applied to this repository". I suggest that this information is useful for the most common development style - the kind which relies on a central repository as the canonical source for a project's code. "gcc-trunk-r117064" means a lot more to me than "39282037d7cc39829f1d56bf8307b8e5430d585f", and is no less precise. I do believe that distributed VCSs such as Git can improve the productivity of these kinds of projects without forcing the developers to suddenly and dramatically alter their workflow. I think ICNs would help make this possible. - Joel