Re: SVG Book (was: SVG IG -- a few ideas)

I'm not sure we really need lots of features of a version control
system (vcs) for a book, but maybe I'm not thinking it through enough
yet.  Basically I want the ability for the main collaborators to
always have the latest copy on their hard drives, to submit patches or
to check changes in, and to have the latest book (the trunk) available
on a website to be browsed at any time.  That's pretty much all I was
looking for.

Actually I don't really have a problem with tagging in svn, it's just
a (lightweight) copy but the effect is the same in my experience.
Maybe you could shed some light on the problems with the tagging
approach in subversion as I'm sure you have more experience.

I'm a fan of bzr because it makes it easier for a svn user.  They use
it on launchpad.net, but I don't think it's popular outside that.

Mercurial (hg), another distributed vcs is also available on
GoogleCode these days though I've rarely used it (just a teensy bit
when hacking on Mozilla once).

git is probably the most popular of the dvcs, I've used it a bit in my
Android work, but not that much of a fan.

I'm also not sure about support for GUIs for any of these as I'm a
command-line user.  I'm familiar with TortoiseSVN and that's about it.

Anyway, I think the Torture Tests and the SVG Book are separate
projects so we don't need to be in the same repository.  I guess you
were thinking so that people don't have to learn about two tools
instead of one, right Jon?

Regards,
Jeff

On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 10:52 AM, Jon A. Cruz <jon@joncruz.org> wrote:
>
> On Oct 12, 2009, at 5:52 AM, Jeff Schiller wrote:
>
> I am also heavily in favour of some source control system (preferably
> subversion) and would also be willing to help out in realtime on irc or
> skype
>
> Currently there are a few issues I have with subversion, most important
> being the fact that it doesn't do tagging; it just pretends to do so. Then
> for this type of project, a distributed version control system might work
> better. Git is one of the more popular at the moment, but I think Bazaar
> (bzr) has a few things that makes it friendlier to the non-hardcore
> programmer.
> I'm also thinking that in the long run it would be nice to use the same
> version control as for the tests. That's where some extra care on choice can
> really pay off.
>

Received on Monday, 12 October 2009 16:05:53 UTC