Re: Paraffin: Parallelism generics for Ada 2005

[Brad Moore <brad.moore@shaw.ca>]

On 26/01/2011 1:27 PM, Simon Wright wrote:
> "R. Tyler Croy"<tyler@linux.com>  writes:
>
>> I've heard a lot of things, but I don't think I've ever heard an
>> argument against version control before!
>>
>> I personally don't care which kind of repository somebody uses, but
>> I've found myself after very weary of the "just download this tarball"
>> approach after years of finding interesting looking projects which
>> have stagnated and become completely out of date that have no publicly
>> visible source history (student or university projects are notoriously
>> bad on this).
>>
>> I don't mean to get too far off-topic, to each their own, I just find
>> it odd that one would go through the trouble of creating a SourceForge
>> project just to distribute tarballs.
>
> I completely agree with this.
>
> Some sort of VCS is vital in any development, even if on one machine
> only; and nowadays there are distributed VCSs which give even a
> single-handed development the benefit of VC both locally (eg, while
> disconnected from the network) and on a network host. [Not so say there
> aren't other advantages.]
>
> SourceForge supports Mercurial (which I like) and Git; others include
> Monotone and Bazaar.

I also think version control is important, so I am not arguing against 
it. In fact, the tar-ball approach itself can be a form of version 
control, so long as the older tar balls are still accessible, and the 
newer ones are numbered so that its easy to see the sequence.

I am currently using git for version control on all my stuff, so at 
least I'm able to see the history of each file.

Whether the real version control should be publicly visible is another 
question.
I think the benefits for that depends more on the nature of the project.
If its a larger project being developed and maintained by an active 
online community then I would think a public version control would be 
beneficial.

If it is a smaller project however, then it may not be worth the trouble
setting the version control up, if the only person maintaining the 
software is the author.

For example if my project were to somehow pickup momentum and people
were expressing interest in getting involved then I would consider 
setting up the version control for that project to facilitate the
development process. Until I see a need, I would likely opt to go with 
the simpler approach.