Re: [Koha-devel] move to savannah

[Nathan Gray]

On Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 07:17:05PM +0100, Thomas D wrote:
> The reasonable answer I had previously from Paul Poulain about what
> alternative software version control systems had been considered in the past
> for Koha is that all such discussions had favoured CVS because it was most
> widely known.  While the relatively small community of active Koha
> developers could learn to use a better tool than CVS, whatever that better
> choice might be, it would restrict the size of the development community to
> those who know or are willing to learn to use the superior software version
> control system.  Koha should impose as few barriers to contribution as
> possible.  Koha needs more contributors not fewer.

Of course, there are lurkers, like myself, who have been watching this
project for years, and are much more comfortable with svn/svk or darcs
than CVS.

It is much easier to make small tweaks with a distributed system, such
as darcs, which is my preference.  However, at work we still use CVS,
and mostly it is because I haven't decided to push for a different
source code management system.  I haven't pushed because that genre of
software seems still to be in a flare-up of ideas, and want to wait till
that flare dies down a little.

> The only way around this obstacle that I can see is the possibility of a
> superior version control system that is CVS command compatible or has a
> wrapper for CVS commands.

Learning the basic commands generally doesn't take more than a few
minutes.  Generally all source code management systems do the same kinds
of things, and have commands that do similar things.

However, working with a distributed SCM is fundamentally different from
working with a centralized SCM.  That difference takes some getting used
to, but can probably be ignored by infrequent committers.

-kolibrie