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Although still not fully stable, a revision system like bazaar-ng saves you to set up a listener/server (which in some occasions needs root privileges).

I like it quite a lot, expecially it's easiness to mirror changes to a remote server, even over ftp, sftp or rsync. Then it's even accessible over normal http.

Eventually, this will be just as usefull as CVS/Subversioni is right now for open source projects on different distributions.

That's because CVS and Subversion are centralized versioning systems. Bazaar and other Arch-like systems aren't. The way things are right now, bug tracking systems and code versioning systems are completely separate. If you can integrate a bug tracking system with something like Arch and retain the distributed nature of it all, then it will definitely be useful for multiple distributions. It's all patches. I think this is the direction they're trying to take things.

I tried using arch to manage my debian packages, which have an upstreamversion-packageversion versioning number scheme. Both tla and baz complained that this wasn't an appropriate version number. This is beyond annoying, it makes arch unusable for my fairly simple needs.

Plus, the UI is completely tied to the implementation, so you have to know a ton about the underpinnings of arch in order to use tla. I don't want to know how arch does what it does. I don't care.

The baz people are working on fixing this, but there's a lot of problems to be fixed (see this for the massive list) and I think it'll take them some time to do so. Currently, baz is pretty buggy for me too, segfaulting on things like branching. That said, I have a lot of faith in both the baz team and Martin Pool, simply because they've thought things through very well. Currently though, tla and baz are nothing but an exercise in pain for me to use, and bzr isn't ready yet. I'll keep checking on them, because I really want to like them, but they make it so hard on me.

I tried using arch to manage my debian packages, which have an upstreamversion-packageversion versioning number scheme. Both tla and baz complained that this wasn't an appropriate version number. This is beyond annoying, it makes arch unusable for my fairly simple needs.

Plus, the UI is completely tied to the implementation, so you have to know a ton about the underpinnings of arch in order to use tla. I don't want to know how arch does what it does. I don't care.

The baz people are working on fixing this, but there's a lot of problems to be fixed (see this for the massive list) and I think it'll take them some time to do so. Currently, baz is pretty buggy for me too, segfaulting on things like branching. That said, I have a lot of faith in both the baz team and Martin Pool, simply because they've thought things through very well. Currently though, tla and baz are nothing but an exercise in pain for me to use, and bzr isn't ready yet. I'll keep checking on them, because I really want to like them, but they make it so hard on me.

What would put Monotone and Bazaar in a class above Subversion?

I'm not trying to back Subversion here, it's just that I'm slightly familiar with it and am interested in knowing what limitations it might impose that these other systems might not.

What features are needed/why BK is so great is a long topic, but being fully decentralized and being able to run over email are some of the major features.

Being able to run over email is an interesting feature... one I'm not sure I understand the need for, if you have to have a fully-featured client to do merges and the like anyway. I guess it's so you don't need to assume network availability ? What does that mean, 'run over email'... it sounds a bit like a method of 'client-independant server API', why provide that functionality over mail and not in some other manner as well?

Is there a forum or something somewhere that this whole 'What features are needed and why" discussion can be examined ? What Linux kernel development list(s) should I be looking at if I'm interested ?

How about Bazaar-NG? It looks like it's a design based on GNU Arch that can do either centralized, or decentralized stuff.

The question is where to go now? My preference would be GNU Arch, as it's more decentralized. But it may not be ready for this heavy a use, and I am hardly an expert in revision control.

There are lots of such tools, including CVS, Subversion (SVN), GNU arch, Monotone, Aegis, CVSNT, Darcs, FastCST, OpenCM, Vesta, Superversion, Codeville, Bazaar, Arx, and Bazaar-NG.

I've become a recent fan of Martin Pool, and I've been keeping tabs on his work with Bazaar-NG, his next generation version of Bazaar, as a distributed free source code control system, for Ubuntu. It's early in development yet, but if there's one thing I've learned from Martin Pool, is he does great work! Keep tabs on him. :)

"The better SCM initiative was established to encourage improved OSS/FS SCM systems, by discussing and comparing them. Among other things, see their comparison file. Zooko has written a short review of OSS/FS SCM tools. Shlomi Fish's OnLamp.com article compares various CM systems as does his Evolution of a Revision Control User. The arch folks have developed a comparison of arch with Subversion and CVS (obviously, they like arch). Another pro-arch discussion is Why the Future is Distributed. A pro-subversion discussion is available at Dispelling Subversion FUD. Slashdot had a discussion when Subversion 1.0 was announced. Kernel traffic posted a summary of a technical discussion about BitKeeper. Brad Appleton has collected lots of interesting SCM links. jemfinch has some interesting essays about SCMs (he uses the term VCS), including why he thinks the approach to branches used by Darcs, Arch, and Bazaar-ng is a poor one. A brief overview of SCM systems that can run on Linux is available."

There are lots of OSS/FS software configuration management (SCM) tools. CVS, Subversion (SVN), and GNU arch get lots of press, but there are many others such as Aegis, CVSNT, Darcs, FastCST, OpenCM, Vesta, Codeville, Bazaar and Bazaar-NG.

You might also take a peek at my paper Software Configuration Management (SCM) Security.

Too late.

Right know, I put my expectations on Bazaar-NG: all the goodies of GNU Arch and the simple interface of Subversion. Developed by Canonical (of Ubuntu fame).