[slime-devel] CVS and friends [was Bugtracker for Slime]

[dherring at tentpost.com]

Matthew Mondor wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Aug 2010 20:10:56 +0200
> Helmut Eller <heller at common-lisp.net> wrote:
>
>> Well, I think everybody can set up it's on repository with whatever VCS
>> he likes that imports from CVS an make some scripts to commit back to
>> CVS.  That's probably less hassle than force everybody to switch to
>> something else.
>
> I agree,

FWIW, Subversion was written because CVS has several well-known flaws
which can result in a borked commit leaving the repository in a completely
inconsistent state.  SVN was designed to be a drop-in replacement with
atomic commits to fix the fundamental issues in CVS.

Speaking from experience, newer tools including DVCSs *can* interact with
CVS; but their users must give up most of the new features in doing so
(including all the distributed features), and the conversion process is
quite fragile and painful (largely due to CVS's lack of atomic commits). 
It is not a pleasant experience.

A switch to SVN means basically changing "cvs command" to "svn command". 
The newer tools with vastly superior history models do have different
command sets.

IMNSHO, there were no justifiable reasons for using CVS in 2005, much less
in 2010.  The choice of VCS has ramifications to end-users and potential
developers.

- Daniel