"Archive" or "Repository"?

Erik Bågfors zindar at gmail.com
Wed Nov 16 13:37:17 GMT 2005


2005/11/16, Aaron Bentley <aaron.bentley at utoronto.ca>:
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> "Repository" is a term used by CVS, SVN, Darcs, Codeville, Monotone,
> git, SVK, etc.
>
> "Archive" is used by Arch and ArX.
>
> The two terms seem to be roughly equivalent, but "Repository" seems to
> be more widely-used.  Is there any reason we shouldn't call our Archives
> Repositories instead?


: [bagfors at zyrgelkwyt]$ ; darcs init --help
Usage: darcs initialize [OPTION]...
Initialize a new source tree as a darcs repository.

: [bagfors at zyrgelkwyt]$ ; bzr init --help
usage: bzr init [LOCATION]

Make a directory into a versioned branch.

: [bagfors at zyrgelkwyt]$ ; darcs get --help
Usage: darcs get [OPTION]... <REPOSITORY> [<DIRECTORY>]
Create a local copy of another repository.

: [bagfors at zyrgelkwyt]$ ; bzr get --help
usage: bzr branch FROM_LOCATION [TO_LOCATION]
aliases: get, clone

Create a new copy of a branch.


bzr calls this a "branch", darcs calls this a repository.

For me, branch means something I create a branch off to do some
hacking on, I will "fork" from that point for a while.  If I just run
"bzr get http://....../" all I do is create a local copy of that
repository.  As long as I just pull stuff, it's still just a copy of
that repository.  If I check something in (and pull stops working),
than it's a branch for me.

That's the way it works in my brain.

For me, "Archive" would be the thing that stores the history and each
commit etc. In a "normal" repository that would be the .bzr directory
but in a centralized storage that would be the central storage.

So, in my mind, a branch might not be the same as a repository, a
repository is not the same as an archive (although it's stored in
one).

But, maybe I'm just adding confusion. I'm happy either way :)

/Erik




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