Re: VCS comparison table
- From
Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
- Date
- Oct 21, 2006, 21:10 UTC
- Message-ID
- <Pine.LNX.4.64.0610211405380.3962@g5.osdl.org>
- In-Reply-To
- <BAYC1-PASMTP07D0D16EAA6ABADDAD39B1AE020@CEZ.ICE>
On Sat, 21 Oct 2006, Sean wrote:
> > Since the utility provided by revno's seems so minimal even in the > case where they do work, Git simply doesn't bother with them. And > "our" experience is that Git really does work well without them.
Yes. This really is what it boils down to.
The _only_ time you actually use revision numbers (as opposed to branch-names or tag-names) is when you want a _stable_ number.
It's that simple. You never really need a revision number otherwise. In other situations, you do things like
git log --since=2.days.ago gitk v2.6.18.. git diff --stat --summary ORIG_HEAD..
or whatever. It's clearly not "stable", but it's also clearly not a revision number from a UI perspective.
When you want a revision number is _exactly_ when you're moving things between branches, or reporting a bug to somebody else, or similar. And that's also _exactly_ when you want the number to be stable and meaningful (ie the other end should be able to rely on the number).
And if you need refer to a central repository to do that, it's clearly not distributed. Not needing such a central reference point is what the word "distributed" _means_ in computer science for chrissake!
Linus