VCS comparison table

[Linus Torvalds]

On Sat, 21 Oct 2006, Erik Bågfors wrote:
> 
> bzr is a fully decentralized VCS. I've read this thread for quite some
> time now and I really cannot understand why people come to this
> conclusion.

Even the bzr people agree, so what's not to understand?

The revision numbers are totally unstable in a distributed environment 
_unless_ you use a certain work-flow. And that work-flow is definitely not 
"distributed" it's much closer to "disconnected centralized".

Now, you could be truly distributed: BK used the same revision numbering 
thing, but was distributed. But BK didn't even try to claim that their 
revision numbers were "simple" and that fast-forwarding is sometimes the 
wrong thing to do.

So BK always fast-forwarded, and the revision numbers were just randomly 
changing numbers. They weren't stable, they weren't simple, and nobody 
claimed they were.

So bzr can bite the bullet and say: "revision numbers are changing and 
meaningless, and we should just fast-forward on merges", or you should 
just admit that bzr is really more about "disconnected operation" than 
truly distributed.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. Truly distributed _cannot_ be 
done with a stable dotted numbering scheme (unless the "dotted numbering 
scheme" is just a way to show a hash like git does - so the numbering has 
no _sequential_ meaning).

Btw, this isn't just an "opinion". This is a _fact_. It's something they 
teach in any good introductory course to distributed algorithms. Usually 
it's talked about in the context of "global clock". 

Anybody who thinks that there exists a globally ticking clock in the 
system (and stably increasing dotted numbers are just one such thing) is 
talking about some fantasy-world that doesn't exist, or a world that has 
nothing to do with "distributed".

			Linus