Choosing a Distributed Version Control System

[Matt Nordhoff]

Goffredo Baroncelli wrote:
> Hello Dave,
> 
> I read you blog, and regarding the bazaar web interface, I would inform you 
> about the existence of the webserve project, 
> 
> The devel branch can be found at
> 
> http://goffredo-baroncelli.homelinux.net/bazaar/webserve-repository/bazaar-webserve-dev
> 
> You can see a demo at
> 
> http://goffredo-baroncelli.homelinux.net/bazaar-dev
> 
> and here you can found the README
> 
> http://goffredo-baroncelli.homelinux.net/bazaar-dev/bazaar-webserve-dev?cmd=content;path=docs/README.txt;pathrevid=kreijack%40inwind.it-20080102225850-qiioeyzv0alev59d;rev=
> 
> 
> BR
> Goffredo

Hmm, I might as well throw in my comments here too:


Another web viewer is Loggerhead:

<http://www.lag.net/loggerhead/>

You can see it in action at
<http://codebrowse.launchpad.net/~bzr/bzr/trunk/files>.


I don't know why you say "Fast" about bzr but not git or hg. A major
selling point of git is that it's blazingly fast, and hg is very fast
too. With bzr's recent performance push, it's improved greatly but it's
still behind the others. (Although I recently compared bzr and hg on one
large commit, and bzr used to take 6-10 times as long, but is now almost
as fast, though with like twice the I/O time.)


About bzr's repo format changes decreasing after 1.0, not so much. :-P
AIUI, the recently-introduced pack format is only the first of three
versions. The metadata and delta formats weren't changed, and they will
both be replaced in the future.

Also, a future feature (subtrees, something vaguely resembling cooler
svn:externals) will require another format upgrade. The format work is
actually already done, but not the UI.

Someday versioned file property support will be added, which will
probably require another format change, but after *that*, bzr will be
perfect and no new disk format will ever be needed. :-)

There's a difference between a completely new disk format and fitting in
support for new features, though. "bzr help formats" currently lists 8
things (plus the 2 unlisted subtree variants), but there are only 3 or 4
repo formats, one of them listed as "transitional". That's not quite so bad.


(Also, as someone with a screwy curl setup, I wouldn't describe Git as
"easy to compile". Rotten curl. (That's not a comment on your article or
anything, just a whine.))

(Hmm, this message took and came out a lot longer and a lot more
traitor-sounding than intended. I thought it would be like 2 short
paragraphs written in ten minutes. Huh.)
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