FreeTDS Development Group

[jklowden AT schemamania.org]

On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 12:15:24PM -0300, Luis Lavena wrote:
>
> cp file.ext to file.ext.orig
> # edit file.ext
> diff -u file.ext.orig file.ext
> 
> There is a lot of manual overhead on that simple action. There is also
> the lack of history of the changes or against which version/revision
> was it implemented.
...
> (and I forgot all my tricks to deal with CVS, sorry).

Seriously, do you expect or even hope every project you deal with will adopt
your favorite version control system?  

I think it's fine and wonderful you've learned to use git.  If you'd like to
set up and maintain a git repository along the lines of what Brian did, or
encourage him to bring it up to date, by all means please do so.  

But surely you agree that the choice of VCS is up to the people maintaining 
the
project?  And surely you understand that changing VC systems is pure 
overhead? 
(There might be a return on the investment, but it's slow.)  

If you want a vote (!) post a 1000-line patch adding functionality we can 
use. 
If what you're doing isn't at that order of magnitude, please take a deep 
breath
and type the half-dozen CVS commands you need.  SF even lets you install your
public SSH key to facilitate using CVS.  

> I can do it, but sometimes I want to take advantage of the tools and
> not the tools take advantage of me.

Same here.  And when SF upgrades its SVN version to support private
identification strings (I don't remember the details, but they're in the
archive) and/or Frediano and I find it convenient for *us* to adopt another 
VCS,
then we'll disrupt the history -- because nothing migrates perfectly -- and 
take
time off from improving the code to devote time to project management. 

I'm curious about git and Hg, but honestly afaict they solve a problem the
FreeTDS project could only hope to have: tens or hundreds of contributors all
merging their code.  We have one repository. It uses software installed on
almost any machine that could build the project, and provides nightly 
snapshots.
 It's about as accessible as it can be.  
 
And, no, I don't think the developer dearth is due to CVS.  No one's ever told
me they'd love to contribute but can't stand dealing with CVS.  Hacking on
FreeTDS requires relatively rare skills that can be applied to a wide variety 
of
problems.  Why address those skills, and the time to understand the codebase, 
to
something that basically works?  Think of the children!  

--jkl