From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 2838 invoked by alias); 30 Oct 2005 04:38:30 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gdb-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-owner@sourceware.org Received: (qmail 2461 invoked from network); 30 Oct 2005 04:38:27 -0000 Received: from unknown (205.217.158.180) by sourceware.org with QMTP; 30 Oct 2005 04:38:27 -0000 Received: (qmail 27109 invoked by uid 10); 30 Oct 2005 04:38:26 -0000 Received: (qmail 9495 invoked by uid 500); 30 Oct 2005 04:38:19 -0000 To: Bob Rossi Cc: Eli Zaretskii , Nick Roberts , gdb@sources.redhat.com Subject: Re: Moving GDB sources to subversion? References: <20051028222253.GX1155@adacore.com> <200510282256.j9SMu2pQ002862@elgar.sibelius.xs4all.nl> <20051028231430.GA9909@nevyn.them.org> <200510282324.j9SNOHql024377@elgar.sibelius.xs4all.nl> <17250.47790.110383.508587@kahikatea.snap.net.nz> <20051030024709.GA12884@white> From: Ian Lance Taylor Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2005 04:38:00 -0000 In-Reply-To: <20051030024709.GA12884@white> Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.4 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-SW-Source: 2005-10/txt/msg00217.txt.bz2 Bob Rossi writes: > Definatly. For instance, look at the Linux kernel. Linus has already > said > "PS. Don't bother telling me about subversion." at > http://lwn.net/Articles/130681/ > > Also, The Subversion Development Team wrote a letter to tell people to > stop bothering Linus about subversion. > http://subversion.tigris.org/subversion-linus.html > > I personally don't see a large difference between the Linux kernel > development and the GCC developement stratagies. With that in mind, it's > hard for me to understand why GCC *is* a good choice for subversion and > Linux *is not*. I don't know how much people want to get into this on the gdb list, but.... There is a big difference between Linux kernel development practices and gcc development practices. In Linux kernel development a number of different people maintain large separate branches on an ongoing basis, and there are frequent cross-merges between different branches. Large projects are developed and maintained by independent groups of developers, and then merged into other main trees over time. There is no single master repository--obviously the one that Linus controls has some priority, but I believe that none of the major commercial Linux distros actually make releases out of it. As far as I know there is no formal management of copyright issues. For gcc, on the other hand, there is a single master repository. Significant gcc support companies such as CodeSourcery and Red Hat make releases directly from branches in the master repository. In order to get write access to the master repository, you must sign formal copyright assignment papers with the FSF. There are no long-lived independent branches; the goal of all branches is to merge into the trunk. The upshot is that Linux requires a distributed source code control system. In fact, Bitkeeper was developed with an eye on what Linus required. gcc does not require a distributed source code control system. gcc might benefit from one; who knows? We seriously considered monotone, but at present it simply is not fast enough to manage the gcc repository. The same is true of arch. We looked at git; it presumably has the features that Linus needs, but it does not have the features that gcc needs. Hope this helps. Ian