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Linus on Subversion, GPL3, Microsoft and More

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the stuff-to-read dept.

victor77 writes "Linus has repeatedly slammed Subversion and CVS, questioning their basic architecture. Subversion community has responded...how valid is Linus's statement?" This and many other subjects are covered in this interview with Linus.

6 of 350 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Can't RTFA... by Oddscurity · · Score: 5, Informative

    He did slam CVS indeed, SVN likewise. In Linux talk at Google about Git[video] he mentions SVN and their credo at on time being something along the line of "CVS done right", commenting that "there is no way to do CVS right."

    The article linked here is light on details concerning SCM, though.

    --
    Indeed!
  2. Re:Can't RTFA... by nwbvt · · Score: 4, Informative
    Site seems to be back up, here is what he had to say:

    I suspect a lot of people really don't much like CVS, so I didn't really even expect anybody to argue that CVS was really anything but a legacy system. And while I've gotten a few people who argued that I shouldn't have been quite so impolite against SVN (and hey, that's fair -- I'm really not a very polite person!), I don't think anybody actually argued that SVN was 'good'.

    SVN is, I think, a classic case of 'good enough'. It's what people are used to, and it's 'good enough' to be used fairly widely, but it's good enough in exactly the sense DOS and Windows were 'good enough'. Not great technology, just very widely available, and it works well enough for people and looks familiar enough that people use it. But very few people are 'proud' of it, or excited about it.

    And here is the reaction from the subversion team. For those of you who don't want to RTFA, they basically say they agree, its not appropriate for something like Linux.

    BTW, isn't this all old news? His original comment on subversion was dated from 05

    --
    Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
  3. Re:Article Summary Misleading by nwbvt · · Score: 4, Informative

    Think that could be because its an Indian news site and the guy himself is Indian?

    Believe it or not, just because something is published on the world wide web doesn't mean it has to cut out everything of local interest.

    --
    Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
  4. Re:Linus would not be pleased... by dknj · · Score: 4, Informative

    and if you're a programmer or an admin that knows sql server, then you know to disable this before you go into production. again, this is not a problem with the product. saying such would be like saying solaris is trash because it enables everything plus the kitchen sink, unless you tell it not to...

    oracle is all great and fun if you have the money to cough up for it. sql server has great performance at a fraction of oracle's cost. of course, a competent architect will know when to use sql server and when to use oracle.

  5. PARADIGM SHIFT! by StCredZero · · Score: 5, Informative

    Damnit, it's a paradigm shift that Linus is talking about. True distributed source code management brings an entirely new way of working. It enables very fast merging at a very fine granularity, which lets you use casually use this information (about what changed and when) in a way that changes the nature of how you work! It's the same sort of difference that code completion or Google search made. Once a certain kind of very useful information -- that has always been available, but a bit inconveniently -- becomes like running water out of the tap, it enables ways of working that just wouldn't have been practical before.

    If you really want to know what Linus is talking about from the man himself, watch this Google Tech Talk. It's over an hour, but there's nothing like hearing it straight from the horse's mouth.

    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-219933204 4603874737&q=git+google+tech+talk&total=3&start=0& num=10&so=3&type=search&plindex=1

  6. Re:Can't RTFA... by smenor · · Score: 5, Informative

    I used to use CVS (and still do for some projects). Then I switched over to SVN. It was remarkably unremarkable.

    Then, a few months ago, there was a /. article on git. It sounded interesting so I tried it... and was thoroughly impressed.

    I was up and running in about 20 minutes. You can use cvs/svn like commands, *but* you get local / decentralized repositories with fast forking and merging.

    Start a project. Type "git init" and you've got a repository in place (you don't have to initialize and then check it out). "git add ." and "git commit" and you've got your first revision.

    It took a little bit more effort to figure out how to push/pull from a remote repository, but it's fairly straightforward. A bunch of people can work in a group, have their own local repositories, and then merge their changes (along with the revision history). It's awesome.

    The only reason I haven't switched all of my projects over to it is that the IDEs I use (Xcode and Eclipse) don't have good git integration (as far as I know).