Version Control

[bd139]

You might want to use svn for that 

[techman-001]

I'll make some kind of summary/comment of the results and what has been discussed here when we reach ~100 votes.

That could be a while, or never because it's looking like only 60 - 70 posters among the hundreds of thousands on this forum actually use a SCM.

To most Github users, I suspect GIT is just a downloader.

[bsudbrink]

Perforce

[magic]

I wonder how fossil fanboys do review?

Say I'm supposed to review a feature to be merged into master. In the usual git-liar workflow, I get a pull request with a bunch of commits which implement the feature in logical steps. I can understand what each commit does, analyze it in isolation, verify that the software builds and works between the commits so no breakage will occur if somebody runs bisect in the future.

And without lying? You guys want me to review the whole branch, including commits like "fix a typo which broke the build" and "address the remarks of Johny Grammar Nazi"? Or maybe look at the Big Diff and try to make sense of all of it? I think I would rather be lied to

[PlainName]

Not a fan boy (only briefly looked at it) but my understanding is that if you really want the compressed version you can allow that. It's just that the whole truth version is still there if someone cares to look at it - it can't be actually removed, just hidden.

[bd139]

I wonder how fossil fanboys do review?

Say I'm supposed to review a feature to be merged into master. In the usual git-liar workflow, I get a pull request with a bunch of commits which implement the feature in logical steps. I can understand what each commit does, analyze it in isolation, verify that the software builds and works between the commits so no breakage will occur if somebody runs bisect in the future.

And without lying? You guys want me to review the whole branch, including commits like "fix a typo which broke the build" and "address the remarks of Johny Grammar Nazi"? Or maybe look at the Big Diff and try to make sense of all of it? I think I would rather be lied to

Code review is a human issue. No tool is any good there despite the marketing. I know that because I’ve watched people hand jobbing each other’s PR’s through because they share a pint after work occasionally. I’ve watched people miss some pretty obvious shit. My favourite being the one where there was a non terminal loop iterating through dates which took out 45 production machines running 50 threads each in under twenty seconds from deployment and caused a massive SLA pay out. All because a dingbat was a bit hung over that day.

And then there’s the issue of the size or scope of a change. When that rebased and squashed PR for a feature branch comes in at 20,000 LOC no one is going to give a shit about it. Flag it through like the chequered flag at the end of a Grand Prix.

And on top of that does anyone know enough about what they’re doing to rationalise every decision made? They need to know the business domain and the programming language and the entire system well for this to be productive.

Ergo we have to ask should we even bother?

Yes we should but don’t formalise it. Drag a random colleague over and sit down and go through it together in person on your branch. Push it to someone else to get feedback on the other side of the planet. Get a QA guy to have a look at your branch. Get the build system and full integration test feedback in your branch (you are building your branches in your CI/CD platform aren’t you?). Once confidence is attained, then merge it and deploy it.

None of that is VCS or product specific.

What is the value of a PR? Near nothing.

I find it’s better to review the humans. Good programmers do the above implicitly and self organise.

Edit: for ref I was the dingbat who left the non terminal loop and it was flagged through by someone who actually accepted the review 11 seconds after I opened the PR...

[olkipukki]

And? Storage is cheap!

Really? You never met guys who estimated a low 5 digital expense in Excel that will last decade or so in AWS, but a recent bill in mid-6 figures "shock the nation"? 

[bd139]

And? Storage is cheap!

Really? You never met guys who estimated a low 5 digital expense in Excel that will last decade or so in AWS, but a recent bill in mid-6 figures "shock the nation"? 

Aka Thursday for me  . It’s not about saving money but shifting capex to opex. No one has worked that out yet.

[olkipukki]

I stick large binaries in amazon S3. You can enable bucket versioning.

How big your "large binaries" and a link to AWS?

I only put a public stuff and works fine with CloudFront.
The versioning save my a** a few times after mess I did there. 

[techman-001]

I wonder how fossil fanboys do review?

Say I'm supposed to review a feature to be merged into master. In the usual git-liar workflow, I get a pull request with a bunch of commits which implement the feature in logical steps. I can understand what each commit does, analyze it in isolation, verify that the software builds and works between the commits so no breakage will occur if somebody runs bisect in the future.

And without lying? You guys want me to review the whole branch, including commits like "fix a typo which broke the build" and "address the remarks of Johny Grammar Nazi"? Or maybe look at the Big Diff and try to make sense of all of it? I think I would rather be lied to

Fanboys ?

The Tcl/Tk project uses Fossil, and it's a rather large project with a decent-sized community, I suppose they manage reviews one way or another ?
http://core.tcl.tk/tk/timeline?y=ci

[bd139]

I stick large binaries in amazon S3. You can enable bucket versioning.

How big your "large binaries" and a link to AWS?

I only put a public stuff and works fine with CloudFront.
The versioning save my a** a few times after mess I did there. 

Dependencies ~400Mb a go. VM images 8-20Gb a go. Link varies. I’m happy on 76mbits down

[sleemanj]

The Tcl/Tk project

TIL that Tcl/Tk still exists!

Seriously I thought that would be deader than CVS at this point!

[PlainName]

I stick large binaries in amazon S3. You can enable bucket versioning.

Doesn't that (bucket versioning) essentially convert git/svn/fossil or whatever back to VCS badness, specifically file versioning as opposed to project versioning? That is, to go back to version n you need version n of the locally held files plus version m of the bucketed files.

[guenthert]

Yeah that's just Linus' attitude.

Showing Nvidia, who treated Linux as second-class citizen, the finger got him then lot of sympathy.  And it seemed to have helped.

RMS complained, then Larry at bitseeker got the ass then it got fixed: https://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=103457829307456&w=2

Bitkeeper is dead.

  Not sure what you mean by 'dead' there.  I don't know how viable Larry's business is, but they're still getting pretty a penny from the company I work for (support contract -- the actual software is FOSS now).  We're using it since the code base is old, quite large and getting it (and more importantly the history of code changes) into git was deemed impractical and not worth the effort a few years back.  Most of the engineers would probably be content using git, but some swear by bitkeeper.  At the very least, we had little trouble with it and Larry (regardless of his reputation otherwise) has been very responsive and competent in the few cases there were questions.

I love Linux flamewars! 

So much that you attempt to start one with half-truth and out-of-context quotations?

[bd139]

Linus’ attitude generally is consistent with that photo. I know the context. It was intended to show the attitude. I mean have you seen the outbursts on LKML?

Bitkeeper is dead. It’s a niche product eaten by momentum. 99% of people I have worked with have never heard of it. Compare Perforce and RCS which are known universally. Even if the latter is dead.

So half truths, no. Out of context, no.

I stick large binaries in amazon S3. You can enable bucket versioning.

Doesn't that (bucket versioning) essentially convert git/svn/fossil or whatever back to VCS badness, specifically file versioning as opposed to project versioning? That is, to go back to version n you need version n of the locally held files plus version m of the bucketed files.

Depends on your workflow. If you have to version large binaries (Gb in size) I haven’t found a better option.

[donotdespisethesnake]

I wonder how many people use AllChange, which I was forced to use recently. It wasn't designed specifically for software, and naturally it's a real pain in the ass to use.

[bd139]

Seen that. That's plainly aimed at upper management not end users

[Jan Audio]

So i searched what GIT is and found out it is a software-application where in you save your source codes ?
ha ha ha

[obiwanjacobi]

So i searched what GIT is and found out it is a software-application where in you save your source codes ?
ha ha ha

That's a joke right...? 

[frogg]

I'm personally a fan of git, but for developers using windows, I think subversion is attractive.

[PlainName]

I am intrigued! Why would Windows make subversion more attractive than git?

[bd139]

TortoiseSVN. UI that isn't shit and mortals can operate.

I slightly hoped this thread had died. Oh well. 

[PlainName]

But there is Tortoisegit, and TortoiseHg.

[nigelwright7557]

I have always tried to be careful about data structures in programs in regards version control.
I tend to leave a few empty spaces in the structures in case i need to add more later on.
The empty items are always zeroed on creation to ensure they are initialised.
Another thing I do is if I really have to add a variable it is saved to disc in its own file rather than mess with files already there.
When it was impossible to do anything else but add a new structure I have always added a "legacy update" function for it so newer versions of software can convert older versions.
This means i tend not to keep old versions of the software.
I have used GIT a couple of times but never found a reason to get the old versions back.
So what is more important to me is not losing any data and so I carefully back up to back drive, flash drives and DVD's.
I keep one flash drive in the car in case of fire.

[Nominal Animal]

I slightly hoped this thread had died.

Well, the voting part is definitely , but hearing from others their preferred workflow is definitely interesting.