How to Fail at SVN(podcats.in)
podcats.in
How to Fail at SVN
http://podcats.in/training/svn-fail.html
6 comments
It's more of a "how to fail at version control", yes - but with a Subversion slant (along the lines of "it can work fine, but the default is bad").
I don't see how that makes this a particularly bad article, though.
I don't see how that makes this a particularly bad article, though.
> By default in SVN, everyone is committing to the same - and indeed the master, de-facto, controlling, always perfect - branch. Trunk.
It's worse than that; svn asks you to maintain the trunk/tags/branches directory structure yourself, rather than including them as core concepts in the VCS itself(1). So, someone can commit an update to something under tags/ and svn won't even give out a warning, since it has no idea that tags/* are supposed to be write-once.
1) Looks like they added `svn branch`, sometime after the 1.4.x version I'm actually using.
It's worse than that; svn asks you to maintain the trunk/tags/branches directory structure yourself, rather than including them as core concepts in the VCS itself(1). So, someone can commit an update to something under tags/ and svn won't even give out a warning, since it has no idea that tags/* are supposed to be write-once.
1) Looks like they added `svn branch`, sometime after the 1.4.x version I'm actually using.
Pffft. Complaining about TortoiseSVN? Use SmartSVN - it works in all 3 OSes, too. I know, I've had to use it in all 3 and it's nice to have that consistancy.
Every time I read something about SVN I just thank god I don't have to use it anymore. Just the thought of a merge-heavy workflow in svn gives me the willies.
1/5 is about using svnserve instead of file:// and network mounts, and doesn't need to be a rant, just a don't use file:// protocol for shared repositories.
I wish HN had downvotes for an article like this.