Repository Formats Matter

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Style Pass
2024-12-27 02:30:15

I've seen many posts recently about SCM user interfaces and how one system is easier to learn, more powerful than another or better supports a particular development style. I submit that these arguments fail to capture the most salient feature of any source code management system—how the system manages the actual source code. This fundamental underpinning of the system, the repository structure, limits the kind of information the system can capture, the robustness and reliability of the data and to a great extent can limit the kinds of repository interactions possible.

A few days ago, Havoc makes a push for Subversion as a reasonable choice for projects. His complaints focus on the Git user interface, while again making this mistake that Git forces users to engage in distributed development.

I agree with Havoc that few projects are large enough in scale to require the kind of hierarchy seen in the Linux kernel. In fact, most projects have fewer than 10 developers working on them, and with close coordination, rarely see the need for any branching and merging at all.

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