[Python-Dev] Looking for VCS usage scenarios (original) (raw)

Gustavo Niemeyer gustavo at niemeyer.net
Thu Nov 6 13:04:55 CET 2008

> > * Will a DVCS allow simpler operation as if we are still using a > > centralized system like CVS or Subversion?

Yes and no. There is nothing to prevent a formal workflow like that in CVS/Subversion. However, the separation of "commit" into "record && push to authoritative" leaves open the possibility of annoying glitches until you get used to it, and even then it's easy to forget to push or to forget that you've committed not-for-pushing stuff, etc, etc. In practice it is probably simpler to use a dVCS-specialized workflow like "record && push to candidate".

Bazaar offers the same semantic if you want to use it. In practice, when you use "bzr checkout" to get a branch, it becomes bound to the remote branch. When you commit to a local bound branch, the change is automatically pushed to the server, including the needed locking semantics, so the workflow is pretty much the same as if it were a Subversion checkout (hence the command name). Branches can be freely bound and unbound without effort, if desired.

In the team I work on we've been using this for a while for the "authoritative" branches. So it's a distributed workflow otherwise, but at the end of the life cycle of a branch, we merge and commit to a bound branch pretty much like committing a change to Subversion.

-- Gustavo Niemeyer http://niemeyer.net

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