question on difference between bazaar and subversion

[Matthew East]

On Mon, 2006-04-24 at 10:08 -0700, Jordan Mantha wrote: 
> I think one of the
> main advantages for us, IMO anyway, is that you can pull in other
> peoples changes (http or sftp). I think that would mean that we
> wouldn't need diffs much anymore. We would just merge the persons repo
> into ours. We can still have a central repository (or something very
> close to it) but also have distributed control. For instance, I think
> it would be much easier for the contributors if they can freely merge
> and pull from each other before having a doc team member push the
> changes to the central repo. Community contributors (including doc
> team members) can group around a specific doc in a way that would just
> be very difficult in svn.

{snip}

> I'm a version control newb, and I like bzr (especially for local use).
> One thing I like is there aren't .svn directories all over the place.
> There is only one .bzr directory at top of the repo, and that's it. I
> also like that it is really pretty easy to use.

{snip}

Ok, here are my uninformed 2 cents. Bear in mind that I'm writing this
without a very good knowledge of how bzr works.

What has always concerned me about bzr is the idea (which may easily be
erroneous) that a decentralised system requires specific individuals to
review and merge changes from other team members. This concerns me in
our team because, as opposed to most Ubuntu/Canonical development, there
are none of us who work on this project on a full time basis, and as
volunteers every individual's contribution varies depending on their
real life commitment. This wouldn't be a problem if the project had 2
contributors, but where there are 20, all working on the same thing, it
might get complicated: if specific individuals have to take
responsibility for merging people's branches on specific documents, then
the consequence will be fragmentation, which would potentially harm the
project.

If bzr has the tools to fit *our* workflow, then I am certainly prepared
to consider moving seriously. However, if moving to bzr means that we
have to adapt our workflow to fit *it*, then I worry that we will have a
problem.

These concerns may all of course be completely irrelevant, because bzr
may fit our workflow perfectly. Let's try and see. While we try it, I
think I'd like to find answers to the following questions:

= New contributors =

Is bzr going to facilitate contribution, or the reverse? Specifically:

1. Is bzr easier to learn than svn for newcomers?
2. Does bzr impose more or fewer requirements on newcomers (in
particular, do they need to run a service like sshd or httpd)

= Our workload =

Is bzr going to facilitate our workload? Specifically:

1. Can we push easily and immediately to a central server (bearing in
mind that lots of people frequently contribute small things)
2. Does it make reviewing other people's contributions easier or more
difficult?
3. Does it merge docbook xml nicely?
4. Is a decentralised version control system going to suit our workload,
bearing in mind what I said above about the large number-volunteer based
contributor-base?

This last question is what troubles me the most. If I'm right and our
workload essentially requires a _centralised_ system, even if bzr can
support that, what actually is the point in moving? Launchpad
integration may be one reason, I suppose. But we definitely need
concrete reasons (apart from "oh, everyone in Ubuntu uses it, it must be
cool!"), IMO.

Matt
-- 
mdke at ubuntu.com
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF
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