Re: cvs better than git?

[Riccardo Mottola <riccardo.mottola%libero.it@localhost>]

Hi!


On 6/17/20 1:27 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> I know I'm in a very small minority here, but personally I hate git. I 
> sortof suspect I will not like hg either, and when the switch happens, 
> it might just mean I'll stop using NetBSD. The whole idea of local 
> repositories and then trying to sync with a central one is just an 
> added layer of problems, in my experience, with no added value. I 
> don't know how many times I've seen local git getting so messed up the 
> easy solution was just to wipe it all and start over again. A very 
> windows-like mentality, which I'm sure more people today are perfectly 
> fine with, but I'm not.


True. I understand you and I feel your pain. I use git more and more, 
also with extremely big repositories and it is a pain, it can break or 
do strange things even when doing "simple" things.

Local repositories are a mess.. Don't you hate that if you have a set of 
local changes you cannot just "git pulL" without doing a commit for a 
merge?

However, a local repo has a big advantage: the possibility to quickly 
determine the status. "git status" works well also for repositories with 
many files: a couple of minutes and you are set, the same on CVS or SVN 
is slow, because it walks the whole repository online. On the other 
hand, you can in CVS easily query a single file quickly, on GIT no.


> However, I'm certainly not going to try to convince people to not move 
> towards it. I just felt like ranting over a tool that is so broken in 
> my view, but which it seems the whole world have gone crazy about. :-)

After using it for years, I admit it has some merits, but it is also so 
convoluted and breaks so easily that it is bad.

What worries me are the dependencies and the long-run availability. CVS 
can be included in base, it is self-contained, fast and written in C! If 
you need ssh, it is an "add on", easily done.

SVN is not so self-contained, but without https, it is acceptable.


Mercurial? no go: python, please not. Just for this reason, maybe it 
would be perfect if written in equivalent C/C++! And please, don't cite 
me "rust"... even worse. Core things should be written with core tools.

Maybe some sort of "anonymous checkout" of mercurial exists written in C?

GIT here is not bad: it is relatively portable.


> Which previous, initially free and open revision control repository 
> was it which then ended up changing their terms and conditions so that 
> everyone more or less had to move away immediately? I do remember that 
> it did happen once already... 


remember SourceForge issues? or other sites? GIThub has its merits, but 
one thing I hate: before MS era its interface was very compatible, so 
you could use it with may browsers. Now, since MS and being "very 
commercial" it is "only latest Firefox" ... try to use with one of the 
many lighter FireFox ports? no lugk, not even 52-ESR derivatives like 
clasic SeaMonkey... nor Midori and others. It is inconvenient and is 
clearly a "change in politics" of GitHub.

Who knows what happens behind the curtains ?


Riccardo