[MLton] Subversion

Matthew Fluet fluet@cs.cornell.edu
Tue, 26 Jul 2005 14:29:10 -0400 (EDT)


> > I would like to suggest considering migration from CVS to SVN.
> I've been thinking of making the same suggestion for a while.

I'm ambivalent, having not used SVN at all.

> Yeah, the database helped to clinch my decision not to switch to SVN
> when I looked at it last year.
> 
> > For me, the killer features of SVN are:
> > [0. similarity to CVS; SVN is easy to learn,]
> >  1. the ability to do (among other things) status queries and diffs
> >     while not connected, and
> >  2. ability to move files and directories.

I always hear #2 as the feature of every improvement over CVS, but it 
always seems to me that it misses the bigger picture.  Sure, you move 
files, and it is great to have logs move with it.  But, the other things 
you do is to split one file into multiple files, or merge multiple files 
into one.  And, in those situations, some (often arbitrary) file gets to 
be the "one" that gets the logs, and everything else loses.  Case in 
point, mlton/control/control-flags.{sig,sml} looks brand new at revision 
1.4, but it really should have all 125 revisions of 
mlton/control/control.{sig,sml}.

Anyways, this isn't a criticism of SVN, per se.  It's a criticism of the 
criticism of CVS.

> The (potential) drawback for the MLton project would be losing old
> revisions and tags.  

I care little for the tags.  And I rarely roll back revisions.  However, I 
find the commit logs for individual files very useful.