FreeBSD starts switch from CVS to Subversion

http://www.freebsd.org/news/newsflash.html#event20080603:01

by nickb • 18 years ago

13 20 18 years ago

jrockway2• 18 years ago

Why Subversion? The only reason for using Subversion is that you're already using Subversion; for "new conversions" it's widely agreed that anything but Subversion is the right thing to use.

I don't want to sound cynical, but could FreeBSD be avoiding Git because Linus wrote it?

mark-t• 18 years ago

They're probably avoiding git because it's GPL. They're awfully picky about that sort of thing. But yes, I had the same reaction. There's bound to be some modern VCS that would be better for them.

teamonkey• 18 years ago

Yeah, a quick look at Wiki shows that there aren't many VCS compatible with the BSD license.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_revision_control_...

cperciva5• 18 years ago

They're probably avoiding git because it's GPL.

I wasn't involved in all of the VCS discussions, but from what I remember, the license question wasn't brought up at all -- I didn't realize until five minutes ago that SVN was Apache licensed, and we've been using CVS for many many years despite it being GPL licensed.

FreeBSD developers want to produce BSD licensed code, of course, but we're not zealots about the tools we use -- we'll use GPLed tools (e.g., CVS and GCC) if they're the best available, and we've even used commercial software (perforce) where it serves a useful purpose.

There's bound to be some modern VCS that would be better for them.

There were advocates within the FreeBSD community for each of SVN, Git, Mercurial. Really, we were all aware of the options.

Andys• 18 years ago

Well, its still a nice upgrade from CVS.

(Atomic transactions!)

jrockway2• 18 years ago

It's also a downgrade. No branches or tags.

cperciva5• 18 years ago

could FreeBSD be avoiding Git because Linus wrote it?

No. FreeBSD is avoiding Git because Git isn't capable of handling a project the size of FreeBSD.

As I see it, the major reasons for choosing SVN were (a) it was possible to convert FreeBSD's 14 year old, 1.8GB src repository to SVN and have things mostly work (there are a few bits which didn't convert properly, but nothing major), (b) there are SVN gurus willing to do the work necessary to fix the bits which didn't work, and (c) SVN is the most CVS-like option available.

That last part is quite important, incidentally -- there has been an experiment with using Perforce for a while, but it has been limited by the fact that FreeBSD developers want to code, not waste time learning new VCS systems. SVN looks and acts like a better version of CVS -- for a community of experienced CVS users, it's a very easy tool to learn.

swombat3• 18 years ago

We had a repository that grew to about 1.5 gig on github recently (due to hundreds of copies of SWF binaries). Neither git nor github even hinted at having any issues with large repos.

I'm down-modding the above because it sounds like FUD. Git has no issues with large repos as far as i'm aware, and based on my own experience.

idea2• 18 years ago

I'm not convinced about the perceived difficulty to learn git et al. You and the other FreeBSD developers are OS hackers. You're telling me it's hard for them to learn a dvcs in a few days? Look at all the Rails developers and users. They seem to have few problems switching to git.

swombat3• 18 years ago

Breaking news in 2015: FreeBSD switches to Git!

FreeBSD starts switch from CVS to Subversion

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