[Python-ideas] Using only patches for pulling changes in hg.python.org (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Tue Jul 6 12:56:00 CEST 2010

On Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 10:15 AM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:

On Tue, 6 Jul 2010 06:41:19 +1000 Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:

Although, as with the CVS to SVN transmissions, the workflows of committers will likely change over time as we become more adept at exploiting the more powerful tool. I liked Joel Spolsky's observation that in moving from a centralised VCS to a distributed VCS, the key idea to wrap your head around is the shift from managing file (and repository) revisions to coherent changesets. I suspect Spolsky has skipped on SVN then, because SVN already allows for coherent changesets (that's how we use it most of the time anyway).

No it doesn't. It has atomic commits (as do many other centralised version control systems), but it still only manages file revisions. The mental conversion Spolsky was talking about was specifically from SVN to Hg, the same one we're looking at. A DVCS isn't written in terms of file revisions the way SVN is, it's written in terms of a directed acyclic graph of changesets.

If anyone wants to see what he actually wrote, rather than my hacked up paraphrase of it, it's the last programming article he did for Joel on Software: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2010/03/17.html

Cheers, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan at gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia

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