Inkscape DVCS - was: Re: GSoC 2009 - Project handling in the repository
The GSoC 2009 might present a good opportunity for inkscape to move to a DVCS.
Students, mentors and testers would benefit from enhanced branch, merge and branch tracking capabilities at github, launchpad, bitbucket, et al.
Jeff
On Mar 20, 2009, at 3:46 AM, Jeff Kowalczyk wrote:
The GSoC 2009 might present a good opportunity for inkscape to move to a DVCS.
Students, mentors and testers would benefit from enhanced branch, merge and branch tracking capabilities at github, launchpad, bitbucket, et al.
We have been tracking them for some time now. So far the benefits have not come to outweigh the drawbacks.
Skim the mailing list archives to see the various issues and factors involved.
On Fri, 2009-03-20 at 08:51 -0700, Jon A. Cruz wrote:
On Mar 20, 2009, at 3:46 AM, Jeff Kowalczyk wrote:
The GSoC 2009 might present a good opportunity for inkscape to move to a DVCS.
Students, mentors and testers would benefit from enhanced branch, merge and branch tracking capabilities at github, launchpad, bitbucket, et al.
We have been tracking them for some time now. So far the benefits have not come to outweigh the drawbacks.
Skim the mailing list archives to see the various issues and factors involved.
I think those are declining. One thing I haven't been following is Windows support. Has anyone tried Tortoise-Bazaar on Windows?
--Ted
On Mar 24, 2009, at 7:28 PM, Ted Gould wrote:
On Fri, 2009-03-20 at 08:51 -0700, Jon A. Cruz wrote:
On Mar 20, 2009, at 3:46 AM, Jeff Kowalczyk wrote:
The GSoC 2009 might present a good opportunity for inkscape to move to a DVCS.
Students, mentors and testers would benefit from enhanced branch, merge and branch tracking capabilities at github, launchpad, bitbucket, et al.
We have been tracking them for some time now. So far the benefits have not come to outweigh the drawbacks.
Skim the mailing list archives to see the various issues and factors involved.
I think those are declining. One thing I haven't been following is Windows support. Has anyone tried Tortoise-Bazaar on Windows?
Probably the main issue I'm waiting on in regards to Bazaar is platform-specific line-end handling. The good news is that it's actively being worked on and there are even patches in and being cleaned up.
One other main issue is GUI tools. When working on MS Windows with CVS, I'd have to use both Tortoise-CVS *and* TkCVS to get the use and tools I need.
One key tool is a revision viewer. http://www.twobarleycorns.net/tkcvs/screen-branch.html http://stuff.gbsfm.info/revision%20graph.png http://www.perforce.com/perforce/products/tours/p4v/ p4v_revision_graph_6.html screencast - http://www.perforce.com/downloads/media/rg/rg.html
A classic, of course, is blame http://blame.sourceforge.net/ http://www.twobarleycorns.net/tkcvs/annotation.png http://www.perforce.com/perforce/products/tours/p4v/ p4v_time_lapse_view_7.html screencast - http://www.perforce.com/downloads/media/tlv/tlv.html
I believe the various DVCS gui tools handle branch management decently. bzr-gtk fell into this category last I checked.
Jon A. Cruz wrote:
A classic, of course, is blame (...)
You mean like "bzr annotate file"? Or is there some extra value add from the GUI?
By the way, if we want to move to a DVCS, I think Bazaar would be the best option. I'm no expert on DVCSes, but it integrates very well with Launchpad, and this integration would solve most of our bug tracking problems (Fix Committed / Fix Released etc.). It's also possible to use it almost exactly like Subversion by simply replacing svn in all commands with bzr, so the pain for Subversion users would be minimal.
Regards, Krzysztof Kosiński
On Sat, 2009-03-28 at 18:08 -0700, Krzysztof Kosiński wrote:
Jon A. Cruz wrote:
A classic, of course, is blame (...)
You mean like "bzr annotate file"? Or is there some extra value add from the GUI?
And "bzr visualize" in bzr-gtk which gives you a version tree. But what I'd really like to know about is the Windows situation :) Is Tortoise Bazaar mature enough?
--Ted
On Sun, 2009-03-29 at 21:47 -0500, Ted Gould wrote:
On Sat, 2009-03-28 at 18:08 -0700, Krzysztof Kosiński wrote:
Jon A. Cruz wrote:
A classic, of course, is blame (...)
You mean like "bzr annotate file"? Or is there some extra value add
from the
GUI?
And "bzr visualize" in bzr-gtk which gives you a version tree. But what I'd really like to know about is the Windows situation :) Is Tortoise Bazaar mature enough?
No, bzr-gtk (at least when I've checked) gives a visual representation of branches, but does not give a visual representation of a *file*.
The use case is a bit different
On Mon, 2009-03-30 at 02:05 -0700, Jon A. Cruz wrote:
On Sun, 2009-03-29 at 21:47 -0500, Ted Gould wrote:
On Sat, 2009-03-28 at 18:08 -0700, Krzysztof Kosiński wrote:
Jon A. Cruz wrote:
A classic, of course, is blame (...)
You mean like "bzr annotate file"? Or is there some extra value add
from the
GUI?
And "bzr visualize" in bzr-gtk which gives you a version tree. But what I'd really like to know about is the Windows situation :) Is Tortoise Bazaar mature enough?
No, bzr-gtk (at least when I've checked) gives a visual representation of branches, but does not give a visual representation of a *file*.
The use case is a bit different
bzr gannotate
But, again, should I just assume that no one on Windows cares about DVCS? I thought you were complaining about Windows tools, which doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
--Ted
On Mar 30, 2009, at 6:28 AM, Ted Gould wrote:
On Mon, 2009-03-30 at 02:05 -0700, Jon A. Cruz wrote:
No, bzr-gtk (at least when I've checked) gives a visual representation of branches, but does not give a visual representation of a *file*.
The use case is a bit different
bzr gannotate
No, that's a different thing. gannotate is equivalent to CVS Blame or a subset of Perforce's "Time Lapse View".
The video on Perforce's Revision Graph shows what is missing: http://www.perforce.com/downloads/media/rg/rg.html
I think the lack of such a tool probably comes from those woring on a DVCS thinking in terms of whole branches, and not that examining individual files would be important.
But, again, should I just assume that no one on Windows cares about DVCS? I thought you were complaining about Windows tools, which doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
No. It's not windows tools per se that I have a problem with.
The first issue is lack of local line-end support. That is the major one. However the Bazaar team is working on that, so we might see it addressed soon.
The GUI tool problem is lack of file level tools, as opposed to whole branch tracking. TortoiseBZR will give you file operations when you right-click in the desktop windows, but that only solves some use cases. Each time I've used Tortoise in the past I would also have to install TkCVS to get the rest of the GUI functionality I need.
In this case, though, it is not only Windows that is missing tools. Those same GUI lacks exist on Linux.
However the good news is that things are close enough, and that If the line-end thing is fixed I can then help them adapt the branch viewer to handle files too.
Jon A. Cruz wrote:
The GUI tool problem is lack of file level tools, as opposed to whole branch tracking. TortoiseBZR will give you file operations when you right-click in the desktop windows, but that only solves some use cases. Each time I've used Tortoise in the past I would also have to install TkCVS to get the rest of the GUI functionality I need.
I'm not sure that GUI tools are necessary to use something. They can drastically improve productivity in many cases, but I don't think they're fundamental, especially for something like a VCS. We're talking about programmers here; are Windows programmers not capable of using the command line? Our Windows build tool is command line only! On top of that, if you are not a project admin, you're only going to work on one or two branches most of the time, so it should be completely manageable without a GUI.
I would opt for the following solution: the students should use Bazaar in conjunction with Launchpad, while the rest can use SVN as usual until we decide that Bazaar is ready for general use. (This option of a peaceful transition is another argument in favor of bzr.) Merges of student code would be done by using Launchpad's bzr-svn support. Ted Gould already works in this manner and could provide the needed know-how.
Regards, Krzysztof Kosiński
On Mar 31, 2009, at 5:11 PM, Krzysztof Kosiński wrote:
I'm not sure that GUI tools are necessary to use something. They can drastically improve productivity in many cases, but I don't think they're fundamental, especially for something like a VCS. We're talking about programmers here; are Windows programmers not capable of using the command line? Our Windows build tool is command line only! On top of that, if you are not a project admin, you're only going to work on one or two branches most of the time, so it should be completely manageable without a GUI.
Whereas GUI tools may not be necessary, they *really* make certain work feasible for certain people.
I've worked with many different source control tools over the years, and am comfortable with both GUI and command-line.
One thing I've found is that for a large portion of the people out there, myself included, good GUI tools for certain tasks make things several orders of magnitude faster.
Among the tasks that good GUI tools will help with are:
* merging branches * integrating changes between branches * creating patches * tracking down bugs and regressions * minimizing changes before submitting code * backporting fixes
In moving from CVS to Subversion we ended up losing good branch and merge tagging and visualization. However the tradeoffs worked out in favor of the move, with things such as atomic commits more than making up the difference.
Oh, and in my professional experience (a few decades now) I've seen time and again that poor SCM tools lead to large losses of productivity. Just as one *can* work on software with only a line editor, one *can* work on a large project without SCM visualization. But just that same way things are *far* more productive if good tools are available.
BTW, did you go through the videos and info at the Perforce site? Those are very informative.
Sent from my iPhone
On 1 Apr 2009, at 01:11, Krzysztof Kosiński <tweenk.pl@...400...> wrote:
Jon A. Cruz wrote:
The GUI tool problem is lack of file level tools, as opposed to whole branch tracking. TortoiseBZR will give you file operations when you right-click in the desktop windows, but that only solves some use cases. Each time I've used Tortoise in the past I would also have to install TkCVS to get the rest of the GUI functionality I need.
I'm not sure that GUI tools are necessary to use something. They can drastically improve productivity in many cases, but I don't think they're fundamental, especially for something like a VCS. We're talking about programmers here; are Windows programmers not capable of using the command line? Our Windows build tool is command line only!
We're very capable of using a command line, but why should we ditch a nice friendly ui that's integrated into explorer?
On top of that, if you are not a project admin, you're only going to work on one or two branches most of the time, so it should be completely manageable without a GUI.
I would opt for the following solution: the students should use Bazaar in conjunction with Launchpad, while the rest can use SVN as usual until we decide that Bazaar is ready for general use. (This option of a peaceful transition is another argument in favor of bzr.) Merges of student code would be done by using Launchpad's bzr-svn support. Ted Gould already works in this manner and could provide the needed know-how.
And no offence to ted but the bzr-svn thing is the reason why all the commit historys got so screwed up a while back. If it can screw with the svn copy like that I'm not sure giving that to a bunch of new programmers is such a smart idea.
Regards, Krzysztof Kosiński
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-----Original Message----- From: John Cliff [mailto:john.cliff@...400...] Sent: 01 April, 2009 13:01 To: Krzysztof Kosiński Cc: inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Inkscape DVCS - was: Re: GSoC 2009 - Projecthandling in the repository
Sent from my iPhone
On 1 Apr 2009, at 01:11, Krzysztof Kosiński <tweenk.pl@...400...> wrote:
Jon A. Cruz wrote:
The GUI tool problem is lack of file level tools, as opposed to whole branch tracking. TortoiseBZR will give you file operations when you right-click in the desktop windows, but that only solves some use cases. Each time I've used Tortoise in the past I would also have to install TkCVS to get the rest of the GUI functionality I need.
I'm not sure that GUI tools are necessary to use something. They can drastically improve productivity in many cases, but I don't think they're fundamental, especially for something like a VCS. We're talking about programmers here; are Windows programmers not capable of using the command line? Our Windows build tool is command line only!
We're very capable of using a command line, but why should we ditch a nice friendly ui that's integrated into explorer?
I ditched Tortoise SVN because it was active all the time and locked directories. I have nothing negative to say about command line SVN.
On top of that, if you are not a project admin, you're only going to work on one or two branches most of the time, so it should be completely manageable without a GUI.
I would opt for the following solution: the students should use Bazaar in conjunction with Launchpad, while the rest can use SVN as usual until we decide that Bazaar is ready for general use. (This option of a peaceful transition is another argument in favor of bzr.) Merges of student code would be done by using Launchpad's bzr-svn support. Ted Gould already works in this manner and could provide the needed know-how.
And no offence to ted but the bzr-svn thing is the reason why all the commit historys got so screwed up a while back. If it can screw with the svn copy like that I'm not sure giving that to a bunch of new programmers is such a smart idea.
Regards, Krzysztof Kosiński
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was%3A-Re%3A-GSoC-2009---Project-handling-in-the-repository- tp22618014p22817431.html
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On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 05:11:57PM -0700, Krzysztof Kosi??ski wrote:
Jon A. Cruz wrote:
The GUI tool problem is lack of file level tools, as opposed to whole branch tracking. TortoiseBZR will give you file operations when you right-click in the desktop windows, but that only solves some use cases. Each time I've used Tortoise in the past I would also have to install TkCVS to get the rest of the GUI functionality I need.
I'm not sure that GUI tools are necessary to use something. They can drastically improve productivity in many cases, but I don't think they're fundamental, especially for something like a VCS. We're talking about programmers here; are Windows programmers not capable of using the command line?
I definitely agree that it is high time to move to a DVCS. I've been using both git and bzr in my day job and it makes so many things so much easier.
I would opt for the following solution: the students should use Bazaar in conjunction with Launchpad, while the rest can use SVN as usual until we decide that Bazaar is ready for general use.
Hmm, I would think it better to just make the decision and move. If we have half the project on SVN and the other half using DVCS, it seems like it'd just be too cumbersome and complicated.
Bryce
On Sat, 2009-04-04 at 14:49 -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:
I definitely agree that it is high time to move to a DVCS. I've been using both git and bzr in my day job and it makes so many things so much easier.
Yes... and it's also high time that bzr admitted there are platforms other than Linux out there and fix their line-end handling.
:-)
It does remind me of the subversion team and their "Tags are bad; people shouldn't use tags" approach. But the good news is that they are close to fixing bzr at least.
participants (7)
-
Bryce Harrington -
Jeff Kowalczyk -
John Cliff -
Jon A. Cruz -
Krzysztof Kosiński -
Preben Soeberg -
Ted Gould