Linus on GIT and SCM

An anonymous reader sends us to a blog posting (with the YouTube video embedded) about Linus Torvalds' talk at Google a few weeks back. Linus talked about developing GIT, the source control system used by the Linux kernel developers, and exhibited his characteristic strong opinions on subjects around SCM, by which he means "Source Code Management." SCM is a subject that coders are either passionate about or bored by. Linus appears to be in the former camp. Here is his take on Subversion: "Subversion has been the most pointless project ever started... Subversion used to say, 'CVS done right.' With that slogan there is nowhere you can go. There is no way to do CVS right."

Comments

git

[chriscappuccio]

git is a piece of shit, pure and simple.

Re:git

[Anonymous Coward]

I was at the talk and I have to say he gained a HUGE amount of respect from me (and other people in the room whose job has to do with source control).

The way git works as a decentralized solution with a chain of trust is simply really useable for really large, multiple projects with interdependencies. And it's even better when you need to control access to certain portions of the code.

I see Git as spider web, with Linus sitting in the center. I can't start to imagine the complexity of the rich release engineer in a big corp who would need to merge the changes of sub-departments and devisions and the chain of trust involved to reach the top ! What I see is that everyone would code and test on out of sync code, but that really doesn't matter since the code is merged later on with synced up code.

Linus knows it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course CVS sucks. And yes, Subversion does suck. GIT beats them hands down.

Linus has it right (as usual). No surprise here.

Lemme check my last home appraisal...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. $1.2 million. Paid for by getting billed out at $400 an hour. I could probably afford more house, but I like my vacations - a train ride with my family in first class sleepers to Glacier Park, maybe take the kids to Discovery Cove for a week or so. The one I'm planning now is going to be about 3-4 weeks bouncing around the South Pacific, NZ, and Oz.

Yeah, I don't know what I'm talking about.

I'm the guy that gets hired to fix your being nine months late and millions over budget.

Because if two developers or more developers who need to work on the same code aren't smart enough to figure out how to do it without stomping on each others work, they're overpaid.

You are smart enough to know you need to fix that bug, and you do have the initiative to work with the developer who already has the code checked out, right? Or are you too fucking lazy and stupid to do that? Because if you work for me, that will be one of the things I expect from you.

So by not allowing a last-second merge, you FORCE you to solve your concurrency issues yourself, EARLY in the development cycle, instead of having you drop in a merge at the last second and say "It worked fine in my branch, not my problem!"

You sound like one of those who needs to be shown the door.

Holy crap

[catbutt]

You are the biggest ass I've seen on slashdot. And I've seen a lot of asses on slashdot. But bragging about how much money you make and the vacations you take, as if somehow that means your opinion is correct....wow.

Smart to post as a coward tho, gotta give you that.

Is it my imagination???

[SETIGuy]

Or is Linus turning into a replica of RMS, only without the manners?