On Mon, 29 Aug 2011, Vadim Goncharov wrote:

Vadim:

I think your post has triggered a number of very productive discussions about improving FreeBSD and how to ensure FreeBSD remains relevant. Unfortunately, I think this is not one of them. The whole world is waiting for a perfect revision control system to turn up, but I think the FreeBSD Project isn't the place to write it.

Historically, interestingly, it might have been -- cvsup was a tool developed in the context of the FreeBSD Project on the basis that we effectively needed something as scalable as a DVCS. It's actually one of the reasons it took us so long to switch away from CVS: we made CVS do things no dreamed possibly in terms of scalability.

Having made a highly disruptive but ultimately successful switch to Subversion, and considered the pros and cons in the classic revision control and DCVS spaces in the process, I think we should continue to sit on Subversion for the time being. However, the thrust of my comments earlier in this thread about git are about something different: not switching revision control systems, or building the ultimate new one, but instead adapting to the current status quo -- in a world in which there is no perfect system (and in which different desirable features are even mutually exclusive), we need to allow people to use the tool that they find easiest and most comfortable. Which means supporting a large pool of downstream git users *better* than we do today.

With so many areas to focus our attention, I honestly think we're better served looking at things like package system architecture, improvements to documentation, support for forthcoming hardware designs, etc, then trying to build yet another DVCS from scratch in the confines of the FreeBSD Project.

Robert