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