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KDE Moves to BitKeeper

Posted by Zonk on from the hard-decision dept.

jonathan_ingram writes "After struggling for several months with a planned changeover from CVS to Subversion, the KDE team have abandoned the effort, and decided to move to BitKeeper instead. As KDE's press release states: "The KDE project had been using CVS for a number of years, but due to persistent and crippling limitations it was finally decided to convert the massive source repository to Subversion, a next-generation CVS clone with fewer limitations. Unfortunately, due to many unresolved issues and technical problems with Subversion, the move has proven impossible. After an intense internal debate, it was finally decided that BitKeeper would be the most appropriate choice for a new revision control system, given its proven superiority and track record in the Open Source community. BitKeeper has enjoyed wide-spread success and praise as the official source code repository for the GNU/Linux kernel."

41 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. Almost believed it! by sofar · · Score: 1



    riight, cmon they are getting worse now fast!

    1. Re:Almost believed it! by sofar · · Score: 1

      dude, that's not funny =^D

  2. Enough.... by xlr8ed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's not even funny anymore...

  3. Could it be? by Lisandro · · Score: 1

    Is this the first non-retarded news of the day?

    PS: I never tried Subversion, but i've heard it's quite good. Can anyone compare it against CVS and the competition?

    1. Re:Could it be? by EnronHaliburton2004 · · Score: 2, Informative

      I never tried Subversion, but i've heard it's quite good. Can anyone compare it against CVS and the competition?

      SVN is like CVS, but with fixes for all the stupid annoying issues. You can actually version directories and metadata in SVN, which rocks. About time.

      --
      94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
    2. Re:Could it be? by Homology · · Score: 1
      PS: I never tried Subversion, but i've heard it's quite good. Can anyone compare it against CVS and the competition?

      Subversion has one thing that really makes it stand out from CVS : Atomic commits. If you during a CVS commit lose network connection, your repository will be corrupted. Another very nice thing is that directories are versioned (so you may actually "delete" a directory, unlike cvs) and you may rename files and still keep it's history.

      For Windows users there is a very nice GUI client (TortoiseSVN) that integrates nicely with Explorer.

      One of the less nice things about Subversion is that it's a memory hog.

    3. Re:Could it be? by Tony+Hoyle · · Score: 1

      That's simply untrue.

      CVS is atomic at the file level - always has been, from its RCS roots. You can *not* corrupt your repository with a broken commit.

      You may get a partial commit, but having played with atomic commits a bit (they're not exactly hard to add to CVS.. did it years ago then took them out again) I really don't like them.

      The problem is if your network is that dodgy you want to be able to restart your commit when you left of, which file-level atomicity lets you do. With commit-level atomicity you have to start all over again, which is a pain.

      The important one is checkout atomicity - ie. that you get a consistent checkout even if someone else starts committing at the same time as you're updating. Some versions of CVS have this.

      Agree with you about the rename.. that's actually a hard problem to solve generically (I do this kind of thing for a living and it's taken me over a year to find a way to do it that didn't suck).

    4. Re:Could it be? by buckhead_buddy · · Score: 1
      Subversion is a very cool version control tool, but any discussion of its merits will usually get proponents of Tom Lord's Arch versioning product riled up for being overlooked. I half expected this April Fools post to try and tweak the Arch team (but perhaps the tweak was in NOT mentioning them).

      Arch attempts to redefine the whole concept of version control while Subversion just adopts the CVS model with a few changes.

      The changes between CVS and SVN take a lot to get used to, but they are important. SVN revision numbers define the state of one's entire repository, not just an individual file's revisions like CVS does. In hindsight this change seems almost trivial, but it's a major re-think for the CVS users I've had to deal with.

      Subversion still has come a long way but it still has a long way to go. It's right on the verge of entering stabilization for version 1.2.0 (which will include some basic, optional locking features). Though it'll probably take some time, I'm quite anxious to see the evolution of the merge tracking and "true rename" support.

      One of the best things about svn is the documentation. The daily developer mailing list has a very high signal and very little noise. The O'Reilly book is free documentation. And if you want to pay for other info, I've found the Pragmatic Version Control Using Subversion book to be a very good intro to version control in general.

      If you want to toy around, look at grabbing an already compiled binary for your platform and follow directions for setting up a file-system based file-system rather than a database file system. At least until you get the hang of things more :-)

    5. Re:Could it be? by EnronHaliburton2004 · · Score: 1

      You can *not* corrupt your repository with a broken commit.

      But with your scenario you will frequently end up with a branch that is in an wierd state. If someone else checks out the branch while it is in this state, they might get the wrong code.

      It's a matter of taste I suppose.

      CVS developers have learned to workaround the lack of atomic commits (group atomic commits?), but personally, I like the ability to have a single clean checkin. A checkin should either work, or fail. It shouldn't 'sorta maybe' work.

      And SVN has other nice features which bring it into the 21st centurty. Directory versioning, metadata, and a cleaner network transport.

      --
      94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
    6. Re:Could it be? by Homology · · Score: 1

      With an atomic commit all changes are either into the repository, or they are not, unlike CVS. In this sense the CVS repository is "corrupt" until the failed commit has been corrected. Any users updating their working copy may find it unworkable. It can be quite a mess to resolve.

  4. For real? by MoxFulder · · Score: 1

    Are they serious?

    --
    My bicyles
  5. Not a joke? by billster0808 · · Score: 1

    Check it out everybody! Real news for once!

  6. April fools? by b1t+r0t · · Score: 3, Funny

    If this is an April Fool's submission, then I don't know enough about any Subversion vs BitKeeper politics to get the joke.

    --

    --
    "Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
    "Open source is evil." - Microsoft
    1. Re:April fools? by jarich · · Score: 2, Informative
      ya gotta read the article... but in case it's down, here are a few of the funnier parts:

      KDE e.V. board member Mirko Bohemian stated, "Following our licencing deal with BitMover, we expect our developers will be twice as productive, just as the GNU kernel developers are now." Linus Torvalds was not available for comment.

      The only significant drawback of the deal is that KDE developers will not be allowed to work on or contribute to any other source control systems as mandated by the BitKeeper license. To comply with this requirement, KDE has temporarily removed Cervisia from the kdesdk module until the CVS support can be replaced by full BitKeeper functionality.

      However, like the GNU/Linux kernel repository, KDE will be available through a read-only CVS interface for anyone preferring not to use BitKeeper for idealistic reasons.

      As a matter of pragmatism, the KDE project believes it is time to move forward and embrace next-generation software source control.

      --
      Agile Artisans
    2. Re:April fools? by nine-times · · Score: 1

      Lisa: (after reading "C:\DOS\RUN" joke) Ha! Only one person in a million would find that funny.
      Frink: Yes, we call that the Dennis Miller ratio.

  7. They had this ruled when I was in grade school by cprincipe · · Score: 2, Interesting

    April fools gags were only allowed until noon.

    Too bad that rule doesn't apply here.

    --

    bun-fhuinneog agam!

    1. Re:They had this ruled when I was in grade school by Fred+Or+Alive · · Score: 1

      I think it might be just about before noon somewhere in the world... Although I think it might be a couple of hours late really. That's the problem with timezones. We should have one time for the whole world! That would sort it! It needs to be metric as well! ;-)

      --
      10 PRINT "LOOK AROUND YOU ";
      20 GOTO 10
    2. Re:They had this ruled when I was in grade school by me+at+werk · · Score: 1

      One time for the whole world? That'll never happen.

      --
      For context, click Parent.
    3. Re:They had this ruled when I was in grade school by Dwonis · · Score: 2, Insightful
      April fools gags were only allowed until noon.

      That was just a cop-out excuse made by people with no sense of humour.

    4. Re:They had this ruled when I was in grade school by kiore · · Score: 1
      If you think that's bad, it's 11:30 AM Saturday where I am (GMT +12).

      The timestamp on the original article reads "Posted by Zonk on Saturday April 02, @10:17AM"

      April fools day was yesterday, but I've already had my rant about Google's late April Fools joke, so I'll let it pass.

  8. GNU/Linux kernel by Tribbin · · Score: 1
    GNU/Linux kernel
    RMS: *Grumble*, Just the linux kernel that is. Has nothing to do with GNU.
    --
    If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
  9. Linux kernel by KFK+-+Wildcat · · Score: 1

    Let me be the first to point out that there is no such thing as a GNU/Linux kernel.

    1. Re:Linux kernel by bcmm · · Score: 1
      Let me be the first to point out that there is no such thing as a GNU/Linux kernel. Tough luck


      Let me be the third to point out...


      Is this for real BTW? The style of what he said seemed a bit fake but I don't really know much about bitkeeper.
      --
      # cat /dev/mem | strings | grep -i llama
      Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
  10. Nope... by DesScorp · · Score: 1

    ...they actually started the day off with what appears to be a real story... ...or, IS it?

    Google...Slashdot....in cahoots? Hmmmmm....

    --
    Life is hard, and the world is cruel
  11. Suurrrrrrreeeeee. by fitz · · Score: 1

    This was a good one. Larry McFly! Stephan Coolio! ROTFL

  12. Send out the clowns... by DietCoke · · Score: 1

    WOLF! WOLLLLLFFF!!!!

  13. Oh by the way by sofar · · Score: 1

    Here is a much more interesting april fools joke, one that had me thinking for a second:

    Lunar-Linux and SourceMage Merging

  14. Two minute intervals? by bryan8m · · Score: 1

    What happened to posting every hour? Articles are coming every few minute! And let me be the second to point out there is NO such thing as GNU/Linux kernel.

  15. A unified front against RMS by EnronHaliburton2004 · · Score: 2, Funny

    RMS is pissed at hearing this news.

    Since RMS never really respected KDE or Bitkeeper anyways, both products decided to team up and work together just to piss RMS off...

    --
    94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
  16. This is a big SHAME by GNUALMAFUERTE · · Score: 3, Funny

    Bitkeeper is PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE. How is this a good thing?. It doesn't matter if they get to pay for it or not. The most popular Free Software Desktop now depends on a proprietary tool to exist?. This doesn't really make any sense. They went through this nightmare once with QT (Back in the time where QT was proprietary), didn't they learn a damn thing?

    --
    WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
    1. Re:This is a big SHAME by GNUALMAFUERTE · · Score: 1

      I Know that Linux uses it, and i Know that Linux is not really Free Software. GNU/HURD is allmost usable now, if it doesn't get stable soon, i will go for OpenBSD, i really hate Open Source, and if i can't have my GNU Operating System, i will go for BSD, but you and your Linux can go fuck yourselves.

      --
      WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
  17. Struggle? by aweiland · · Score: 1

    So, no one on the KDE team could run cvs2svn?

    These stories are getting worse as the day goes on.

  18. I formally apologize... by smittyoneeach · · Score: 1

    I requested restraint on the part of the /. editors.
    "Less is more," foolishly spake I.
    Paraphasing Keidas, "Tidalwaves couldn't save the world from slashdotifornication"
    Go ahead, flame me like I was SpanishInquisition, or something...

    --
    Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
  19. OK Listen up Taco! by OECD · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Next year, ONE April Fools story. Got that? ONE! Maybe that way you'll put some thought into making it Funny/Insightful/WorthFsckingReading.

    You can link to everyone else's cleverness in a Slashback (remember those?) style roundup.

    That is all. Carry on.

    --
    One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
  20. Re:AND LOOK WHAT IS COMING: by sofar · · Score: 1


    Actually it isn't ... If you read down in the announcement you'll find that many lunar/sm users have been asking about this. To be honest it would make a lot of sense since lunar and sm haven't diverted that much in 2 years time.

  21. just correcting one thing by burntash · · Score: 1

    the kernels name is Linux, not GNU/Linux.

  22. Haha very funny (Spoiler alert!) by TheNarrator · · Score: 1

    Sorry to spoil it for all you guys Read the thread for fun. They found a bug with large trees and fixed it.

    http://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2005-02/1054.shtml

  23. Could we mod an article -1 Troll by TuringTest · · Score: 1

    It is not even funny. Almost. Well, a little bit.

    --
    Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
  24. For those wondering... by Illissius · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...this has more humour value for the actual KDE(-devel) community for which it was intended, as KDE really *is* moving over to Subversion. The migration was originally planned to be completed today, but was delayed for a few more days due to various issues.

    --
    Work is punishment for failing to procrastinate effectively.
  25. Will they be changing back now? by irabinovitch · · Score: 1

    I wonder how this will be affected by BitMover's recent decision to end development of their "free as in beer" version. Are enough KDE developers employed by companies willing to buy comercial versions? or will they be moving to back to CVS?

    1. Re:Will they be changing back now? by irabinovitch · · Score: 1

      OK yes, I am a fool. I should have checked the date . /me goes back and sulks in his corner.