Re: video of git talk

[Eric Gillespie <epg%NetBSD.org@localhost>]

Darren Reed <darrenr%netbsd.org@localhost> writes:

> Both svn and hg suck in that you cannot get a single file or small
> sub-directory tree out of a repo, you need to get the whole f'ing thing.
> 
> This isn't just a workflow thing of being able to checkout src/gnu,
> but also, for example, being able to do 'cvs checkout sys/sys/param.h'.

If I understand you correctly, this is not true.  You can
svn checkout from as deeply in the repository as you like,
e.g. 'svn co .../src/gnu' or 'svn co .../sys/sys'.  It's true
that you can't checkout param.h only, but if you can get just the
directory, is that not good enough?

Note that the latest release (1.5) includes a new "--depth"
feature for excluding parts of a tree.  For example, if sys/sys
had a bunch of directories but you only wanted the files, you
could check it out with '--depth files'.  Unfortunately, the UI
is really not there, and it's not clear that the feature will
ever become usable.

> So while lots of smart and intelligent people may have worked on
> this problem, I'm willing to bet that none of them have come up with
> a design/product that was built from the ground up to serve this
> project. Thus I think we, and the open source community, could be
> well served if someone or some people sat down to design and write
> such a tool that did do what we wanted.

Those who remember me as a Subversion advocate may be surprised,
but I'm sure you're right.

-- 
Eric Gillespie <*> epg%NetBSD.org@localhost