6 ms·

Unfortunately, the reason it worked was (as someone who uses both svn and git professionally) it was entirely plausible that the subversion devs would want to u

by cwoac 12y ago

Unfortunately, the reason it worked was (as someone who uses both svn and git professionally) it was entirely plausible that the subversion devs would want to use git.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
MetaCosm 12y ago
Indeed, if nothing else than for access to the Github community.
- masklinn 12y ago
  Github has supported SVN access since April 1, 2010: https://github.com/blog/626-announcing-svn-support https://github.com/blog/626-announcing-svn-support and write via svn since May 4, 2010: https://github.com/blog/644-subversion-write-support https://github.com/blog/644-subversion-write-support
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    I'm not sure whether to trust that first announcement...
    - masklinn 12y ago
      You don't have to trust it, you can go to any gh repository and get the address to the svn access in the sidebar: > You can clone with HTTPS, SSH, or Subversion.
eik3_de 12y ago
SVN Devs thought: haha, no one will really believe we would not prefer SVN rest of the world thought: man, is SVN really so bad that even the devs won't use it? That's sad, but hey, they're responsible developers choosing the best tool for the job. now that we know it was a joke, are we more convinced that SVN is great?
- untothebreach 12y ago
  I would think that people who already thought SVN is great probably continued thinking SVN is great, and people who thought otherwise, continue to think otherwise. I currently have to use both in my job, and look forward to when our conversion to git is complete.
  - silon3 12y ago
    Imo the core of git is superior, but the command line interface of SVN is much better. Git is just horribly messy. The distributed stuff push/pull had a lot of work and improvements, but the work/commit cycle is just messy, at least when compared to SVN or mercurial.
    - untothebreach 12y ago
      That's fine, I just happen to respectfully disagree :) I started with git though, so I'm sure that has something to do with it. I learned and used git for quite a while before I had to use svn for work, and I found myself very annoyed with certain svn-isms.
- dasil003 12y ago
  If any SVN dev truly believes that svn is better than git in any technical sense then I wouldn't trust the engineering judgment of that developer. However, it's also clear that svn is a hugely important project, not just for legacy reasons but also to provide certain benefits (mostly around simplicity and control) that many organizations need. But SVN itself has none of those needs, it's an open source project of the nature for which git was specifically designed. So I'd think any rational developer would say it's perfectly reasonable for SVN development to use git. All else being equal, of course dogfooding is ideal, but in this case all else is clearly not equal.
  - gecko 12y ago
    If any SVN dev truly believes that svn is better than Git in any technical sense then I wouldn't trust the engineering judgment of that developer. Hi. Small-time Mercurial contributor and Kiln founder. I use both Git and Mercurial in my daily workflow, and only on very rare occasions touch Subversion. Subversion is better than Git and Mercurial in at least several key areas: 1. Access controls. While this is not necessary for individual products, or even many companies, only Subversion offers the kinds of access controls that some large companies require. While you can *work around* that by sharding your code into tons of repositories, not all companies want to do that, and I don't honestly blame them. 2. Very large repositories. Facebook's work on Mercurial finally allows Mercurial to scale to those sizes (with significant trade-offs), but Git still cannot. 3. Very large files. Game companies in particular need to do asset management. Subversion can work with large files directly, Mercurial can kind of "fake out" working with them directly through largefiles, and Git forces you to use a third-party tool like Git annex with a custom workflow. 4. Interop with legacy tools. Subversion repositories can be accessed trivially with WebDAV, which, while I honestly think is mostly a antifeature, does allow random people in your office to trivially access things in Subversion directly via Finder/Gnome/Windows WebDAV support (and even commit, with proper settings, simply by saving). Just because Subversion doesn't use Git's branching system and isn't distributed doesn't mean it's totally without merit, and someone so wrapped up in Git's ecosystem that they can find no merit left in Subversion is a developer who likely has an irrational approach to evaluating systems.
flatline 12y ago
Indeed, I recall the mercurial maintainers discussing a move to git in all seriousness.
- jordigh 12y ago
  What? I don't believe this. Git has nothing that hg devs would want, and lacks many features that hg aficionados like me love. Where did you see this move?
  - flatline 12y ago
    Wish I could find it now, it was linked to on HN between 6 and 12 months ago IIRC, it was on an issue tracker or mailing list archive. A number of the devs were in favor of moving to git, it was shot down but was an interesting discussion and appeared to be serious. Git was a better fit for some particular use case in the workflow on Hg trunk, but now the details have escaped my mind.
    - jordigh 12y ago
      It's April 2, no longer cool to be an April fool.
apendleton 12y ago
And plausible that a bunch of respected developers could actually be that nasty to each other in a ticket thread.
Xylakant 12y ago
In which universe would that be plausible. It's not in the one that I live in. The SVN developers were always fairly candid and open about the fact that they think, that SVN is the tool they want to build, but that their priorities do not align with every other project under this sun. That is, unlike Linux, who promotes git as the superior and end-of-it-all VCS, the SVN people publicly state that they're building a system that adopted certain tradeoffs that may make it unsuitable for some kind of project - especially for the linux kernel. [1] Even though I dropped SVN and adopted git for the large majority of my projects, I still see the occasional project that would be served much better by using a stupid, centralized VCS such as SVN and I'm happy that SVN exists and continues to thrive. [1] http://subversion.tigris.org/subversion-linus.html http://subversion.tigris.org/subversion-linus.html

by cwoac 12y ago

Unfortunately, the reason it worked was (as someone who uses both svn and git professionally) it was entirely plausible that the subversion devs would want to use git.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

MetaCosm 12y ago

Indeed, if nothing else than for access to the Github community.

masklinn 12y ago
Github has supported SVN access since April 1, 2010: https://github.com/blog/626-announcing-svn-support https://github.com/blog/626-announcing-svn-support and write via svn since May 4, 2010: https://github.com/blog/644-subversion-write-support https://github.com/blog/644-subversion-write-support
- jessaustin 12y ago
  I'm not sure whether to trust that first announcement...
  - masklinn 12y ago
    You don't have to trust it, you can go to any gh repository and get the address to the svn access in the sidebar: > You can clone with HTTPS, SSH, or Subversion.

eik3_de 12y ago

SVN Devs thought: haha, no one will really believe we would not prefer SVN rest of the world thought: man, is SVN really so bad that even the devs won't use it? That's sad, but hey, they're responsible developers choosing the best tool for the job. now that we know it was a joke, are we more convinced that SVN is great?

untothebreach 12y ago
I would think that people who already thought SVN is great probably continued thinking SVN is great, and people who thought otherwise, continue to think otherwise. I currently have to use both in my job, and look forward to when our conversion to git is complete.
- silon3 12y ago
  Imo the core of git is superior, but the command line interface of SVN is much better. Git is just horribly messy. The distributed stuff push/pull had a lot of work and improvements, but the work/commit cycle is just messy, at least when compared to SVN or mercurial.
  - untothebreach 12y ago
    That's fine, I just happen to respectfully disagree :) I started with git though, so I'm sure that has something to do with it. I learned and used git for quite a while before I had to use svn for work, and I found myself very annoyed with certain svn-isms.
dasil003 12y ago
If any SVN dev truly believes that svn is better than git in any technical sense then I wouldn't trust the engineering judgment of that developer. However, it's also clear that svn is a hugely important project, not just for legacy reasons but also to provide certain benefits (mostly around simplicity and control) that many organizations need. But SVN itself has none of those needs, it's an open source project of the nature for which git was specifically designed. So I'd think any rational developer would say it's perfectly reasonable for SVN development to use git. All else being equal, of course dogfooding is ideal, but in this case all else is clearly not equal.
- gecko 12y ago
  If any SVN dev truly believes that svn is better than Git in any technical sense then I wouldn't trust the engineering judgment of that developer. Hi. Small-time Mercurial contributor and Kiln founder. I use both Git and Mercurial in my daily workflow, and only on very rare occasions touch Subversion. Subversion is better than Git and Mercurial in at least several key areas: 1. Access controls. While this is not necessary for individual products, or even many companies, only Subversion offers the kinds of access controls that some large companies require. While you can *work around* that by sharding your code into tons of repositories, not all companies want to do that, and I don't honestly blame them. 2. Very large repositories. Facebook's work on Mercurial finally allows Mercurial to scale to those sizes (with significant trade-offs), but Git still cannot. 3. Very large files. Game companies in particular need to do asset management. Subversion can work with large files directly, Mercurial can kind of "fake out" working with them directly through largefiles, and Git forces you to use a third-party tool like Git annex with a custom workflow. 4. Interop with legacy tools. Subversion repositories can be accessed trivially with WebDAV, which, while I honestly think is mostly a antifeature, does allow random people in your office to trivially access things in Subversion directly via Finder/Gnome/Windows WebDAV support (and even commit, with proper settings, simply by saving). Just because Subversion doesn't use Git's branching system and isn't distributed doesn't mean it's totally without merit, and someone so wrapped up in Git's ecosystem that they can find no merit left in Subversion is a developer who likely has an irrational approach to evaluating systems.

flatline 12y ago

Indeed, I recall the mercurial maintainers discussing a move to git in all seriousness.

jordigh 12y ago
What? I don't believe this. Git has nothing that hg devs would want, and lacks many features that hg aficionados like me love. Where did you see this move?
- flatline 12y ago
  Wish I could find it now, it was linked to on HN between 6 and 12 months ago IIRC, it was on an issue tracker or mailing list archive. A number of the devs were in favor of moving to git, it was shot down but was an interesting discussion and appeared to be serious. Git was a better fit for some particular use case in the workflow on Hg trunk, but now the details have escaped my mind.
  - jordigh 12y ago
    It's April 2, no longer cool to be an April fool.

apendleton 12y ago

And plausible that a bunch of respected developers could actually be that nasty to each other in a ticket thread.

Xylakant 12y ago

In which universe would that be plausible. It's not in the one that I live in. The SVN developers were always fairly candid and open about the fact that they think, that SVN is the tool they want to build, but that their priorities do not align with every other project under this sun. That is, unlike Linux, who promotes git as the superior and end-of-it-all VCS, the SVN people publicly state that they're building a system that adopted certain tradeoffs that may make it unsuitable for some kind of project - especially for the linux kernel. [1] Even though I dropped SVN and adopted git for the large majority of my projects, I still see the occasional project that would be served much better by using a stupid, centralized VCS such as SVN and I'm happy that SVN exists and continues to thrive. [1] http://subversion.tigris.org/subversion-linus.html http://subversion.tigris.org/subversion-linus.html