Re: What is your preferred VCS?

[Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@stephe-leake.org>]

deadlyhead <deadlyhead@gmail.com> writes:

> For those who like Monotone: is using a "real database" really that
> much of advantage?  

It gives high-level atomic transactions. Either you commit _all_ files,
or you commit none. 

Others have talked about being able to do SQL queries. That's not as
useful as it might seem; almost everything in the database is a gzipped
blob, so it's not easy to search on. But some things are plain text
(attributes, author names); doing SQL on those can be useful.

Personally, I've only resorted to SQL when something was broken. I
quickly fix the real bug in the monotone C++ code, so SQL is becoming
less usefull over time :).

> I'm a bit leery of such an opaque system being used to save my
> patches. Having physical file-system access to changes makes _me_ feel
> a bit more secure, and is something that I really like about GNU Arch.

That is a point. However, you can in fact retrieve any file intact from
the database via mtn automate commands. Once you trust that, the atomic
transactions make it worth it.

> Is it the speed that makes it good? 

Speed is very subjective. On most systems I use, for the workspaces I
have, monotone is "fast enough"; it doesn't get in the way of my normal
work flow. 

-- 
-- Stephe