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Posted to users@subversion.apache.org by "Zhang, Shu Wen PSE NKG" <sh...@siemens.com> on 2006/07/31 00:59:10 UTC

subversion weakness

Hi,
 
We are evaluating Subversion tool. We found Subversion is indeed good at
many features, e.g. directory versioning, branch and merge, atomic
commits and http protocol.
 
We also want to know about the weakness of subversion. We search on the
internet but found little of this. Does anyone know some information
about weakness of subversion?Or subversion limitation? e.g. Concurrency,
numbers of users submitted at the same time
 
Thanks a lot.
 
Best Regards,
Zhang Shuwen

Re: subversion weakness

Posted by Les Mikesell <le...@gmail.com>.
On Mon, 2006-07-31 at 17:53 -0400, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:

> > On 7/31/06, Andreas Schweigstill <an...@schweigstill.de> wrote:
> >> If you have _really_ big projects - like the Linux kernel - it may be
> >> better to use a version control system like Bitkeeper or GIT. 

> Some of the lacking tools (such as enforced submitter logging and bug 
> tracking integration) may be addressable by the very flexible pre-commit and 
> post-commit "hook" operations. 

Is there a 'feature comparison' somewhere for subversion vs. GIT?

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell@gmail.com


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Re: subversion weakness

Posted by Nico Kadel-Garcia <nk...@comcast.net>.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andy Levy" <an...@gmail.com>
To: <an...@schweigstill.de>
Cc: <us...@subversion.tigris.org>
Sent: Monday, July 31, 2006 3:03 PM
Subject: Re: subversion weakness


> On 7/31/06, Andreas Schweigstill <an...@schweigstill.de> wrote:
>> If you have _really_ big projects - like the Linux kernel - it may be
>> better to use a version control system like Bitkeeper or GIT. But for
>> most small or medium sized projects Subversion is a really good
>> solution.
>
> There are several high-profile "large" projects running SVN.  KDE and
> Apache are the first 2 that come to mind.

There hundreds if not thousands of quite large projects on Sourceforge, 
using Subversion. Given the Bitkeeper license craziness that the Linux 
kernel went through (when the core developer of Samba reverse engineered the 
protocol and ticked off the Bitkeeper authors), I bet that the Linux kernel 
developers have lamented using Bitkeeper occasionally ever since.

Some of the lacking tools (such as enforced submitter logging and bug 
tracking integration) may be addressable by the very flexible pre-commit and 
post-commit "hook" operations. 

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Re: subversion weakness

Posted by Andy Levy <an...@gmail.com>.
On 7/31/06, Andreas Schweigstill <an...@schweigstill.de> wrote:
> If you have _really_ big projects - like the Linux kernel - it may be
> better to use a version control system like Bitkeeper or GIT. But for
> most small or medium sized projects Subversion is a really good
> solution.

There are several high-profile "large" projects running SVN.  KDE and
Apache are the first 2 that come to mind.

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Re: subversion weakness

Posted by Andreas Schweigstill <an...@schweigstill.de>.
Hi!

Garrett Rooney schrieb:
>> - online repository replication only with third-party tools
> 
> Subversion 1.4 adds the ability to have read-only replicas of
> repositories via svnsync.

Since Subversion 1.4 hasn't been released yet currently repository
replication is a feature of some third-party products.

Quite interesting is the concept of SVK. Unfortunately it has
lots of dependencies from other (Perl) packages.

Also commercial solutions are available for Subversion repository
replication, like WANdisco, which is quite expensive. But are such
solutions worth the money? I'm not sure.

>> - no possibility to sign files, check-ins or changesets
> 
> Lots of people make noises about this, but few actually show up to
> work on it.  You're welcome to do so if you find it necessary.

No, I won't work on it because I don't need it in Subversion. But
it can be a very usefull mechanism when using distributed repositories.

> That's pretty incorrect.  Subversion's hook scripts provide all the
> functionality you need to integrate with bug tracking systems or
> workflow managers.

I didn't say that it isn't possible to connect such systems.

> Note that the size of the project has little to do with why the linux
> kernel uses GIT.

Hmmm, I have to disagree. For very large projects you need a system
which scales very good with a large number of users. Centralized
repositories are quite limited. IIRC Linux introduces Bitkeeper because
it made it possible to use multiple repositories.

>  There are many subversion repositories that are much
> larger in size (KDE and the ASF being two good examples).  The reason
> linux uses GIT is that it better maps to their workflow, they like
> distributed repositories, not centralized ones, because it better
> matches the way Linus likes to work.  Most projects do not have that
> kind of work flow.

Decentralized repositories make it quite easy to split off projects
without polluting the repositories with branches and subprojects. This
can also be very usefull for small projects. Yes, also I have copied
whole Subversion repositories for test purposes.

And please don't understand me wrong: I have switched all my projects
to Subversion, and I am quite happy with it.

With best regards
Andreas Schweigstill

-- 
Dipl.-Phys. Andreas Schweigstill
Schweigstill IT | Embedded Systems
Schauenburgerstraße 116, D-24118 Kiel, Germany
Phone: (+49) 431 5606-435, Fax: (+49) 431 5606-436
Mobile: (+49) 171 6921973, Web: http://www.schweigstill.de/

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Re: subversion weakness

Posted by Garrett Rooney <ro...@electricjellyfish.net>.
On 7/31/06, Andreas Schweigstill <an...@schweigstill.de> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Zhang, Shu Wen PSE NKG schrieb:
> > We also want to know about the weakness of subversion. We search on the
> > internet but found little of this. Does anyone know some information
> > about weakness of subversion?Or subversion limitation? e.g. Concurrency,
> > numbers of users submitted at the same time
>
> Since Subversion was designed by very experienced CVS users and
> developers, many it's weaknesses don't exist in Subversion. But it
> also is not perfect:
>
> - Only centralized repositories

True.

> - online repository replication only with third-party tools

Subversion 1.4 adds the ability to have read-only replicas of
repositories via svnsync.

> - no possibility to sign files, check-ins or changesets

Lots of people make noises about this, but few actually show up to
work on it.  You're welcome to do so if you find it necessary.

> - missing integration with bug reporting tool or workflow manager
>    (third-party available?)

That's pretty incorrect.  Subversion's hook scripts provide all the
functionality you need to integrate with bug tracking systems or
workflow managers.

> If you have _really_ big projects - like the Linux kernel - it may be
> better to use a version control system like Bitkeeper or GIT. But for
> most small or medium sized projects Subversion is a really good
> solution.

Note that the size of the project has little to do with why the linux
kernel uses GIT.  There are many subversion repositories that are much
larger in size (KDE and the ASF being two good examples).  The reason
linux uses GIT is that it better maps to their workflow, they like
distributed repositories, not centralized ones, because it better
matches the way Linus likes to work.  Most projects do not have that
kind of work flow.

-garrett

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Re: subversion weakness

Posted by Andreas Schweigstill <an...@schweigstill.de>.
Hi!

Zhang, Shu Wen PSE NKG schrieb:
> We also want to know about the weakness of subversion. We search on the 
> internet but found little of this. Does anyone know some information 
> about weakness of subversion?Or subversion limitation? e.g. Concurrency, 
> numbers of users submitted at the same time

Since Subversion was designed by very experienced CVS users and
developers, many it's weaknesses don't exist in Subversion. But it
also is not perfect:

- Only centralized repositories
- online repository replication only with third-party tools
- no possibility to sign files, check-ins or changesets
- missing integration with bug reporting tool or workflow manager
   (third-party available?)

If you have _really_ big projects - like the Linux kernel - it may be
better to use a version control system like Bitkeeper or GIT. But for
most small or medium sized projects Subversion is a really good
solution.

With best regards
Andreas Schweigstill

-- 
Dipl.-Phys. Andreas Schweigstill
Schweigstill IT | Embedded Systems
Schauenburgerstraße 116, D-24118 Kiel, Germany
Phone: (+49) 431 5606-435, Fax: (+49) 431 5606-436
Mobile: (+49) 171 6921973, Web: http://www.schweigstill.de/

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RE: subversion weakness

Posted by Brent Webster <br...@liquidcomputing.com>.
The only real weakness in SVN that I have noticed is "merge history"
between branches and trunk.  Currently all my users must add detailed
commit comments when submitting merged changes from other branches.
Comments would include the actual 'svn merge -r 3456:3457 ...' command
text along with some English description as well.
 
Another nuisance, is the inability to forcibly delete a particular
version of a binary file.  I use SVN as a product as well as a source
code repository so I have no "easy" way to cleanup older versions of
binary files.  As a result, my repository is growing but it's
manageable.
 
---------
Brent Webster
Team Lead, Sys Mgmt & Sys Integration
Liquid Computing Corporation
 


________________________________

	From: Zhang, Shu Wen PSE NKG [mailto:shuwen.zhang@siemens.com] 
	Sent: July 30, 2006 8:59 PM
	To: users@subversion.tigris.org
	Subject: subversion weakness
	
	
	Hi,
	 
	We are evaluating Subversion tool. We found Subversion is indeed
good at many features, e.g. directory versioning, branch and merge,
atomic commits and http protocol.
	 
	We also want to know about the weakness of subversion. We search
on the internet but found little of this. Does anyone know some
information about weakness of subversion?Or subversion limitation? e.g.
Concurrency, numbers of users submitted at the same time
	 
	Thanks a lot.
	 
	Best Regards,
	Zhang Shuwen