[Python-Dev] PEP: Migrating the Python CVS to Subversion

[Nicholas Bastin]

On 8/4/05, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:
> Nicholas Bastin wrote:
> > Perforce is a commercial product, but it can be had for free for
> > verified Open Source projects, which Python shouldn't have any problem
> > with.  There are other problems, like you have to renew the agreement
> > every year, but it might be worth considering, given the fact that
> > it's an excellent system.
> 
> So we should consider it because it is an excellent system... I don't
> know what that means, in precise, day-to-day usage terms (i.e. what
> precisely would it do for us that, say, Subversion can't do).

It's a mature product.  I would hope that that would count for
something.  I've had enough corrupted subversion repositories that I'm
not crazy about the thought of using it in a production system.  I
know I'm not the only person with this experience.  Sure, you can keep
backups, and not really lose any work, but we're moving over because
we have uptime and availability problems, so lets not just create them
again.

> >>I think anything but Subversion is ruled out because:
> >>- there is no offer to host that anywhere (for subversion, there is
> >>  already svn.python.org)
> >
> >
> > We could host a Perforce repository just as easily, I would think.
> 
> Interesting offer. I'll add this to the PEP - who is "we" in this
> context?

Uh, the Python community.  Which is currently hosting a subversion
repository, so it doesn't seem like a stretch to imagine that
p4.python.org could exist just as easily.

> >>- there is no support for converting a CVS repository (for subversion,
> >>  there is cvs2svn)
> >
> >
> > I'd put $20 on the fact that cvs2svn will *not* work out of the box
> > for converting the python repository.  Just call it a hunch.
> 
> You could have read the PEP before losing that money :-) It did work
> out of the box.

Pardon me if I don't feel that I'd like to see a system in production
for a few weeks before we declare victory.  The problems with this
kind of conversion can be very subtle, and very painful.  I'm not
saying we shouldn't do this, I'm just saying that we should take an
appropriate measure of how much greener the grass really is on the
other side, and how much work we're willing to put in to make it that
way.

--
Nick