[Lazarus] SubVersion vs Git

[Alexander Klenin]

On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 18:02, Florian Klaempfl <florian at freepascal.org> wrote:
> Git is a hype. Git might be nice for projects with >100 developers and
> which has (like linux) dedicated branch maintainers. Git allows to
> support complicated project structures with several layers of
> maintainers and project managers. But this is something smaller projects
> like FPC or Lazarus don't need.

I disagree. I, for example, have moved all my Unix-based projects to Git,
even personal ones, and it is much better to work with even in a
single-developer case.
In particular, ability to create commits off-line is very valuable to me.
The only problem of Git is poor Windows support, and as unfortunately some
of my projects are Windows-specific, I still prefer to use SVN for those.

Windows compatibility is also the reason I would not recommend
to move Lazarus/FPC from Subversion (yet).

>> * Git repositories are MUCH smaller.
>
> Who did tell you this? Linus? Does he have the history of the Linux code
> since version 0.1 in his repository?
Since Git is distributed, the notion of "his" repository is rather vague,
but such a repository definitely exists:
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/old-2.6-bkcvs.git;a=summary


>> * Git is local, so checking history or doing commits are really fast.
>
> I doubt that a repository containing the full lazarus history is smaller
> than a repository containing each file twice.
They are usually of about equal size, for example, svn checkout of
Pidgin (IM tool) is 122 MB while complete history in Git repository is 148 MB.
But the OP's point was that local operations are MUCH faster,
so much that it changes the work flow. For example, to show a few last
log messages
from the lazarus repository takes me 10-20 sec., and showing a diff between
to revisions of a file -- another 30-60 sec., while in Git these
operations are instantaneous.

>> * You have lots of backups of Git repositories because they are local
>> to each developer. In SubVersion, if the repository server is down,
>> everybody is stuck.
>
> Only with committing. With a DVCS you're also stuck if the repository
> for the "official" code is dead. Great that you can "commit" to your
> local repository but nobody will see it so what's the point about it?
With SVN if the central repository is dead, then
the whole history of the project vanishes with no chance of restoration.
Of course, the central repository should be backed up, but still if the failure
occurs, it is catastrophic.
On the contrary, with DVCS (not only Git) such a failure is just a
minor inconvenience,
since each developer has a local copy of the history, and can easily publish it.

Another compelling feature of Git is the possibility to create and manage
local branches. For example, when I want to add a feature to Lazarus,
I would like to present it as a series of clean patches for easier review
and better log history. However, I can not do this with Subversion in
a practical way,
so I have to submit first patch of the series, wait for it to get accepted,
submit the second one etc.
This wastes both my and reviewer's time so much that it can take months
instead of weeks to complete a moderately complex feature.
Actually, I due to this obstacle have given up trying to develop
more complex features for Lazarus and just submit small patches for
trivial things ;-)

>> *  How well is Git supported on other platforms than Linux?
>
> Near to unusable, mercurial is much better in this regard
That I agree with. Perhaps it is time for me to try Mercurial.


-- 
Alexander S. Klenin
Insight Experts Ltd.