Dear Jerry,
in message 4293794C.5020206@smiths-aerospace.com you wrote:
Are you still considering switching from CVS to a distributed version control system? The following is a pretty interesting summary of a few of them: http://www.livejournal.com/users/bramcohen/17319.html?thread=163751
Yes, I am - thanks a lot for the pointer!
The fact that we're not further down that road is caused by two issues: lots of lack of time on my side, and the changes of the toolchain used for the Linux kernel.
At the moment I feel a tendency to follow the LInux kernel and use the same tool chain, too - as I don't have any clear personal preferences yet (and not enough time to play around and develop such) I think it is more important to chose ONE toolchain instead of which one. However, I still hope that when the dust settles there will be some other solution but git. It's not really clear to me if Linux has settled with git forever, or if it's only a stepping stone on the way.
Comments and input welcome!
With ARCH, my approach was to create a Sourceforge CVS -> ARCH master, using ARCH to create changesets that tracked the Sourceforge CVS master repository. I then created a "local master" ARCH repository and applied the "master master" patchsets to the "local master". I've had some problems tracking the master repository successfully.
Do you have something like a step-by-step description one could esily follow, and especially a little more details about the problems you mentioned?
Monotone looks promising because Linus was considering using it and because, according to the article, git closely resembles it. If you're going to grab a tiger tail, might as well grab the tail of the biggest one ;-) Monotone is designed to make multiple branches and multiple heads easy to create and merge, which seems to be a good way to go for tracking a master and simultaneously controlling local changes. I don't have enough time in on it to see how well it works in practice.
:-( I am _especially_ interested in practical usage information about Monotone.
DARC looks very promising for slaving off a master repository with local changes. I like the idea of being able to easily forward a changeset to the Repository Master (you), and then, when it gets accepted, undo the local changeset and apply the master changeset. ARCH can be used this way but DARC appears to be structured more for this type of usage with its emphasis on independent commutable patches. How well it works in practice remains to be seen...
I have to admit that I didn't know much about darcs before. I'm under the impression that monotone is still a more likely candidate for being the Linux kernel tool of choice, or am I wrong?
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk