[Python-Dev] PEP: Migrating the Python CVS to Subversion

[Trent Mick]

Who made me the Perforce-bitch? Here I am screaming "Subversion!
Subversion!" and y'all think I just using that as cover for a p4 lover
affair. :)

[Donovan Baarda wrote]
> On Mon, 2005-08-08 at 15:49, Trent Mick wrote:
> > One feature I like in Perforce (which Subversion doesn't have) is the
> > ability to have pending changesets. A changeset is, as with subversion,
> > something you check-in atomically. Pending changesets in Perforce allow
> > you to (1) group related files in a source tree where you might be
> > working on multiple things at once to ensure and (2) to build a change
> > description as you go. In a large source tree this can be useful for
> > separating chunks of work.
> 
> This seems like a poor workaround for crappy branch/merge support. 

More like a pretty nice independent self-organizing feature that was
necessitated as a workaround for a crappy solution (clientspecs) for
huge data trees.

> I'm new to perforce, but the pending changesets seem dodgey to me... you
> are accumulating changes gradually without recording any history during
> the process... ie, no checkins until the end.

You want to do checkins of code in a consisten state. Some large changes
take a couple of days to write. During which one may have to do a couple
minor things in unrelated sections of a project. Having some mechanism
to capture some thoughts and be able to say "these are the relevant
source files for this work" is handy. Creating a branch for something
that takes a couple of days is overkill.

Perforce branching is pretty good in my experience. For very long
projects one can easily create a branch.


> Even worse, perforce seems to treat clients like "unversioned branches",
> allowing you to review and test pending changesets in other clients.

I'm not sure what you are talking about here. Yes, client information is
stored on the server, but the *changes* (i.e. the diffs) on the client
aren't so you must be talking about some other tool.

Actually, if there *were* such a feature that would be quite handy. I'd
love to be able to easily transfer my diffs developed on my Windows box
to my Linux or Mac OS X box to quickly test changes there before
checking in.

> This supposedly allows people to review/test each others changes before
> they are committed. The problem is, since these changes are not
> committed, there is no firm history of what what was reviewed/tested vs
> what gets committed... ie they could be different.

The alternative being either that you have separate branches for
everything (can be a pain) or just check-in for review (possibly
breaking the build or functionality for other developers until the
review is done). Actually the Perl guys working on PureMessage
downstairs have two branches going in Perforce: one for checking into
right away and then a cleaner tree to which only reviewed check-ins from
the first are integrated.

I'm not saying I am awash in pending changelists here. Nor that they
should be used for what is better handled with branching.  It is a tool
(and a minor one).

> Trying to develop and test a mixture of different changes in one
> source tree is asking for trouble... they can interact.

...within reason.

Trent

-- 
Trent Mick
TrentM at ActiveState.com