Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Linus on GIT and SCM

Posted by kdawson on from the strong-opinions dept.

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."

3 of 392 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why winge? by zzatz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Linus isn't saying that CVS and Subversion have fixable bugs or missing features. It's not about the code.

    He is saying that they solve the wrong problem. The Subversion team wants to solve Problem A, and Linus wants to solve Problem B. No amount of code will turn the solution to Problem A into a solution for Problem B. Bothering the Subversion team with code addressing Problem B will only irritate them, since they're working on Problem A.

    The right way to handle differing goals is to start a different project. That's what he did.

    Don't be confused by the labels. Source Code Management means different things to different people, and there isn't always much overlap in how each person defines it. Ships and airplanes are both 'vehicles', but that doesn't mean that a few changes will turn one to the other.

  2. Re:Merging *does* suck by Timothy+Brownawell · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So don't do it.

    The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.

    It's always done late in a development cycle, in the rush to get the project out the door.

    Why? It doesn't have to be. At least if you use something that isn't horribly broken.

    So don't branch, and DON'T allow concurrent checkout of any code - FORCE the DEVELOPERS who need to work on the same code to COORDINATE their work EARLY in the development cycle. Of course they'll bitch.

    Yes, they will. Because this is a monumentally stupid idea. Because the entire *purpose* of revision control systems (note: "CVS" stands for "Concurrent Versioning System") is to make it possible for developers to work on things at the same time. The idea is that you can get more benefit from the concurreny than you get difficulties from merging.

    If your technical leadership has the spine to show prima donna twits who won't follow development rules the door. Of the entire company.

    Rules like "merge early, merge often", perhaps? Fixes the problem, and *doesn't* cripple development horribly like your idea would.

  3. it'll never catch on by sohp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Distributed version control the way git does it (conceptually, not necessarily the implementation) is the best idea in SCM since concurrent development and optimistic merge conflict resolution on check-in.

    Notice how, even years after better ideas superceded the lock-modify-unlock paradigm, many tools and shops still use exclusive-lock SCM.

    It could be quite a while before you see anything like the way git does SCM in use in the majority of programming shops.