[python-committers] Survey about DVCSs compared to svn

[Richard Tew]

On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 10:36 AM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
>> However, it is often said that branches in DVCS system are so much
>> better to work with. Subversion supports these as well, it's just
>> that we currently don't make much use of them and that's what I
>> wanted to point out.
>
> Perhaps because they are not really practical? For example, I don't know
> how often you use svnmerge, but it's surprisingly slow even for small
> merges. It also seems to transfer lots of information over the network.

On the note of SVN bandwidth usage during merges, the merge of the
changes between the Python 3.0 and 3.0.1 tagged revisions into the
corresponding Stackless Python branch, used up almost exactly two
gigabytes according to Tortoise SVN.  This was a trial merge and then
the real merge, at a gigabyte a piece.

Regarding this DVCS survey in general, Stackless Python is hosted in
the svn.python.org repository.  As we are a distinct project from
Python itself, I don't really have a stake in a choice which affects
Python and haven't filled the survey in.  If the SVN hosting went away
and the chosen DVCS solution did not have a good Windows UI (like
TortoiseSVN), then I would have to make sad faces.

Cheers,
Richard.