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• That's an interesting observation. (Score:1)

  by duff (16) on 2007.07.12 9:29 (#56196) Homepage Journal

  You've nailed something down that's been bugging me for a little while. I'm a definite subversion user but I've been increasingly getting the feeling that subversion doesn't quite fit my way of working. Thus I've been looking at git lately.
  
  The thing is though, that I have no fear of branching because there's a "recipe" for merging and I don't have to think too much about it other than to record revision numbers in the log. So I'm all for branching in subversion. Also though, I tend to not do any complicated merges because they are too much work (and large potential for me to screw up).
  
  It will be interesting to see how subversion 1.5 changes the dynamic of "branch/merge fear" since it will do the bookkeeping for you.

  Reply to This

  • Re: (Score:2)

    by jdavidb (1361)

    The thing is though, that I have no fear of branching because there's a "recipe" for merging and I don't have to think too much about it other than to record revision numbers in the log.

    Bingo; I think you just identified a huge chunk of my fear: I barely had merging in CVS down, and I don't yet fully understand the "recipe" for it in Subversion. So, schwern (or anybody), should I spend time getting really comfortable with merging in subversion and then move to SVK, or will SVK make all of that into time wasted?

    --
    J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers
    • Re: (Score:2)

      by schwern (1528)

      Merging in SVN is currently pretty dumb because you have to do all the book-keeping yourself, recording what revisions have already been merged into what branch. Its tricky and its time consuming and its easy to forget and you have better things to do. You should do it once or twice manually just to understand what's involved in keeping a branch up to date and so you can better appreciate never having to do that again. I had to write svn merge tools back when svnmerge sucked. Its not fun.
      
      After that I'd
      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jdavidb (1361)

        Thanks for the advice! :)

        --
        J. David works really hard, has a passion for writing good software, and knows many of the world's best Perl programmers
  • Re: (Score:2)

    by schwern (1528)

    there's a "recipe" for merging and I don't have to think too much about it other than to record revision numbers in the log.
    

    You shouldn't have to think about it at all. Its a rote task. Book-keeping. Monkey work. The sort of things computers are very good at. Humans are very bad and prone to make mistakes.
    
    You might want to look at SVK or the Fisher Price version svnmerge [orcaware.com]. svnmerge does for you what you're currently doing by hand.

    Also though, I tend to not do any complicated merges because they are to
    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Matts (1087)

      You shouldn't have to think about it at all. Its a rote task. Book-keeping. Monkey work. The sort of things computers are very good at. Humans are very bad and prone to make mistakes.

      Not quite. There will *always* be cases where a merge has to be manual. It's just not possible to 100% automate merging. SVN could do it better, but it'll never be Monkey Work.