When will be CVS replaced by modern version control system?

Nils Philippsen nphilipp at redhat.com
Fri Nov 9 11:37:42 UTC 2007


On Wed, 2007-11-07 at 11:41 -0600, Josh Boyer wrote:
> On Wed, 7 Nov 2007 15:12:45 +0100
> Adam Tkac <atkac at redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > CVS has already passed over best years. I'm wonder why modern
> > project like Fedora still has sources in this ancient system. Are here
> > any plans to replace it by git, mercurial, svn or other more modern
> > version control system?
> 
> Replacing a VCS for the fun of it is pretty pointless.  Can you
> elaborate on a workflow you would like to see that CVS is not suited
> to?

- Embargoed security fixes. With CVS you need to jump through hoops over
hoops to get this right, e.g.: internal CVS server with developer write
access that syncs to public read-only CVS server only those pieces not
tagged as embargoed. Then all kinds of people complain about lack of
openness. With a DVCS, I can do the changes locally, or push them to the
SooperSekrit(tm) embargo repository of my choosing (we could have a
locked down one where koji pulls from, this could automatically pull
from the public repository to get normal changes) and push things public
once they are public.

- Quick operations. I usually "cvs ci", "make tag build" on several
Fedora versions of my packages in parallel to overcome the sheer
slowness of CVS. Then Murphy comes around and breaks not one, but all of
these builds -> unnecessary lost time for me, unnecessary lost CPU
cycles on the builders.

- People without write access could do proposed changes in their local
repos and (in Mercurial lingo) "hg bundle" and send them in a mail, or
let me pull their repos.

- With a DVCS, we could put the several Fedora/EPEL versions into
branches and merge between them. Think of that, real merges which (how
crass) would automatically add new patches and all that with history
info! Patches with history even though they've been renamed! Oh, the
decadence!

>   Right now, CVS works fine for what we do, which is mostly editing
> spec files.
>
> I am by no means a proponent of CVS.  I think it sucks.  But we have no
> _usecase_ for a different VCS at the moment.

That is not true. CVS itches me at a number of places that's not funny
anymore. See above for some examples. The fun thing is that there are
DVCSs out there that don't need huge retraining for people coming from
CVS.

Nils
-- 
     Nils Philippsen    /    Red Hat    /    nphilipp at redhat.com
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary
 Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."  --  B. Franklin, 1759
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