Comments on: Further thoughts on version control

By: code, code.back, code.back2… - A better way with Revison Control (svn/git/bzr/hg tutorials & comparisons) « ☠ I could not think of a blog title ☠

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 06:26:57 +0000

[...] in their changelogs. I haven’t found any videos on Bazaar but there have been three, shuttleworth, posts recently on bazaar as a lossless [...]

By: Mark Shuttleworth on renaming and merging — Version Control Blog — branching and merging, Ideas, SCM features and concepts, Bazaar/bzr,

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 20:50:36 +0000

[...] “Further thoughts on version control”; [...]

By: Bob

Bob — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 15:26:32 +0000

Lol @ cunning plan, must be a Blackadder fan.

By: Jakub Narebski

Jakub Narebski — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 16:11:23 +0000

About recording renames, it usually requires explicitely telling VCS about rename. First, you have to remember to do that, second it is useless in mixed VCS environment, where some changes come from other VCS like Quilt or as mailed patches.

Mark, could you please *tag& this series with something like “Version Control” and not only “Thoughts” and “Free software”? Thanks in advance.

By: brendan

brendan — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 18:27:15 +0000

James, why do you say that Mercurial tracks renames the same way that git does? In fact it records copies explicitly, and uses that information for log, annotate, grep, merge etc.

By: Thorsten Wilms

Thorsten Wilms — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 09:16:04 +0000

Regarding further thoughts … I wonder if it would make sense to have a distribution under VCS. An installation would be a checkout. Configuration changes, adding/removing software would define the local branch. Updating / upgrading the distro would be merging.

For version control on a desktop level, it might be interesting to do branching / checkouts / merging via drag and drop, so users could collaborate on any kind of project not just on a file, but a versioned project level easily.

By: James Henstridge

James Henstridge — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 02:04:29 +0000

Zeno: how would you implement such a “renaming tool” outside of the VCS? To accurately track renames, that information needs to be recorded at commit time (and do so for all commits). If you don’t do that, then you’re left having to guess where the renames occurred and you’re back to where GIT/Mercurial are.

By: Ed Ad

Ed Ad — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 14:04:31 +0000

I second Zeno that GIT is way better for coding. Of course it would be nice if other sites such as SourceForge or Berlios support bazaar, but more support for git or subversion would be welcome in Launchpad too. (Of course without first converting it to bazaar.) Your post seems to insinuate that Launchpad (unfortunately not all GPL) does have “cunning secret plans to launch a proprietary system based on it”.

By: Zeno Davatz

Zeno Davatz — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 11:23:52 +0000

Interesting. As you say, you need a “Renaming” tool witch is maybe not so much an SCM. If you are looking for a Source-Code-Management-Tool, I still believe GIT is the best you can get. But of course GIT is about Code and not about File-Names.