[Asterisk-Dev] benevolent dictatorship, or inclusive developper community?

[Steven Critchfield]

On Thu, 2004-01-08 at 12:08, Peter Nixon wrote:
> On Thursday 08 January 2004 18:59, Steven Critchfield wrote:
> > On Thu, 2004-01-08 at 10:32, C. Maj wrote:
> > > On Wed, 7 Jan 2004, Chris Albertson waxed:
> > > > (see update command in cvs manpage). So, yes you could have
> > > > multiple lines of developmentand merge them back into a main line.
> > >
> > > Yeah and live in a nightmare.  The kernel only uses CVS as a
> > > daily (or whatever) dump of what's in BitKeeper.  People
> > > submit patches against CVS, sure, but the "branching" is
> > > done with BK repositories.
> > >
> > >     http://www.bitkeeper.com/
> >
> > Well without dredging up the BK vs. every other revision control
> > software flame war, lets just point out that that wouldn't be a viable
> > option here.
> >
> > I would suggest subversion, but it is easier to stick with what more
> > people know at this moment and not force anyone to deal with the
> > conversion of the tree one more time.
> 
> Subversion is hardly a great leap from CVS with regards learning curve. Simply 
> replace all "cvs" commands with "svs". Of course there are some extra, but I 
> guess they are not so necessary for simple usage..
> 
> SVS would seem to be the best fit for an upgrade should one been required..

Okay, after going to the subversion site and looking at chapter 4 of the
book to see how branching and all works under subversion, I am
definitely thinking that is a way of dealing with what I wanted.

The trick is in complex tagging and maybe not so much of the branches.
Specifically it is possible for someone to specify what passes for
stable by picking specific file revisions out of the history and
packaging them together as a branch. Also it is possible for anyone
themselves to "pin" certain files to specific versions themselves and
therefore not have to worry about the development going on elsewhere.

Specifically, those of you in SIP or H323 land that are always wanting
updated VoIP drivers, but not necessarily wanting to upgrade the rest of
the asterisk software could essentially make your own "branch" by
pinning the rest of the software to a specific version and letting your
pet VoIP driver migrate on up the versions so you can keep it patched,
but not have to track the rest of the changes.

I think I might have to revisit learning the CVS import scripts for
subversion and do some more thinking about it. I'm really happy with
subversion. 
-- 
Steven Critchfield  <critch at basesys.com>