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

On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 10:39 PM, Jon A. Cruz <jon@joncruz.org> wrote:
> However... the main benefit can come from branches for development tweaking.
> As each person/group/company/whatever works on refining a test or sets of
> tests, they can be checking into a branch as they go along. This allows for
> better collaboration, and avoids the problem of someone "breaking" the
> trunk. This also allows for easier experimentation and a "safer" way for
> newer contributors to get involved with less risk. A DCVS such as git or bzr
> can really help in such cases.
>

I agree that publishing in-progress branches is a BIG benefit of a
DVCS and I'm really in favor of this.

However, I was reminded this morning of another big benefit of
Subversion:  the ability to set MIME types.  This may not sound like
much, but for web apps (and for web documents) this can be a big
advantage as you can browse directly to the trunk and see the
progress.  This is what we do in SVG-edit:

http://svg-edit.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/editor/svg-editor.html

We also use branching in SVN:

http://svg-edit.googlecode.com/svn/branches/2.1/editor/svg-editor.html
http://svg-edit.googlecode.com/svn/branches/2.2/editor/svg-editor.html
http://svg-edit.googlecode.com/svn/branches/2.3/editor/svg-editor.html

We also use one tag to indicate the latest stable release (currently 2.3):

http://svg-edit.googlecode.com/svn/tags/stable/editor/svg-editor.html

When 2.4 is released, I will delete the 'stable' tag and re-create it
pointing to the 2.4 branch.

The fact that this is all accessible by a web browser without
requiring the user to check out any code is, I think, a big advantage.

Do any of the DVCS allow this?  I'm thinking of Mercurial since
GoogleCode supports that as well as SVN, but I'm not familiar enough
with it.  I admit that this may not be as big of a factor with the SVG
book or the Torture Tests since they will presumably be published
elsewhere when finished.

Though it may sound like it, I'm really not trying to push Subversion
and I'm willing to go with whatever system we all agree on.  Just
trying to gather facts.

Jon, do you want to take the lead on investigating the best option for
either of these projects in terms of where to host them and the DVCS
to go with?

Regards,
Jeff

Received on Tuesday, 13 October 2009 12:53:09 UTC