Curious about SCM choice

[Gordon Tetlow]

On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 7:55 PM, Milo Hyson <milo at cyberlifelabs.com> wrote:

> I apologize in advance if I have the wrong list for this, but it didn't
> really look like anywhere else was more appropriate.
>
> I'm curious about the reasons for FreeBSD adopting Subversion over the
> other candidate systems. I've read the pages discussing the pros and cons,
> but haven't found anything discussing the ultimate deciding factors. I ask
> not because I disagree with the decision, but because my company is
> currently facing a similar situation. We currently use Subversion but there
> is some interest in other tools. Understanding what "tipped the scales" as
> it were could prove valuable in our own decision making.
>

As an SCM expert at my place of employment, it really does come down to a
couple of simple decisions. The biggest one for a company is: Do you want a
centralized or distributed model for your development model? CVS, SVN, and
Perforce are all centralized repositories (Perforce even moreso that the
others). Hg, git, and bzr are all decentralized and distributed models.

Moving to SVN makes a lot of sense for the FreeBSD project both as a
stepping stone (it's better than CVS and retains more information), works
well with our existing infrastructure (we can export things back to CVS
relatively easily to support CVSup since the usage model between them is
very similar), and works well with our existing development model (one
central repository that everyone talks to).

These are the reasons it makes sense for the FreeBSD project, you'll have to
identify the reasons that make sense for your company.

-gordon