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annotate en/intro.tex @ 219:15a6fd2ba582
Start talking about the advantages of distributed tools.
author | Bryan O'Sullivan <bos@serpentine.com> |
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date | Mon, 14 May 2007 11:20:34 -0700 |
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1 \chapter{Introduction} |
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2 \label{chap:intro} |
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3 |
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4 \section{About revision control} |
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5 |
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6 Revision control is the process of managing multiple versions of a |
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7 piece of information. In its simplest form, this is something that |
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8 many people do by hand: every time you modify a file, save it under a |
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9 new name that contains a number, each one higher than the number of |
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10 the preceding version. |
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11 |
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12 Manually managing multiple versions of even a single file is an |
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13 error-prone task, though, so software tools to help automate this |
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14 process have long been available. The earliest automated revision |
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15 control tools were intended to help a single user to manage revisions |
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16 of a single file. Over the past few decades, the scope of revision |
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17 control tools has expanded greatly; they now manage multiple files, |
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18 and help multiple people to work together. The best modern revision |
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19 control tools have no problem coping with thousands of people working |
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20 together on projects that consist of hundreds of thousands of files. |
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21 |
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22 \subsection{Why use revision control?} |
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23 |
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24 There are a number of reasons why you or your team might want to use |
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25 an automated revision control tool for a project. |
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26 \begin{itemize} |
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27 \item It will track the history and evolution of your project, so you |
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28 don't have to. For every change, you'll have a log of \emph{who} |
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29 made it; \emph{why} they made it; \emph{when} they made it; and |
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30 \emph{what} the change was. |
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31 \item When you're working with other people, revision control software |
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32 makes it easier for you to collaborate. For example, when people |
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33 more or less simultaneously make potentially incompatible changes, |
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34 the software will help you to identify and resolve those conflicts. |
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35 \item It can help you to recover from mistakes. If you make a change |
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36 that later turns out to be in error, you can revert to an earlier |
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37 version of one or more files. In fact, a \emph{really} good |
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38 revision control tool will even help you to efficiently figure out |
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39 exactly when a problem was introduced (see |
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40 section~\ref{sec:undo:bisect} for details). |
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41 \item It will help you to work simultaneously on, and manage the drift |
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42 between, multiple versions of your project. |
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43 \end{itemize} |
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44 Most of these reasons are equally valid---at least in theory---whether |
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45 you're working on a project by yourself, or with a hundred other |
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46 people. |
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47 |
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48 A key question about the practicality of revision control at these two |
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49 different scales (``lone hacker'' and ``huge team'') is how its |
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50 \emph{benefits} compare to its \emph{costs}. A revision control tool |
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51 that's difficult to understand or use is going to impose a high cost. |
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52 |
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53 A five-hundred-person project is likely to collapse under its own |
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54 weight almost immediately without a revision control tool and process. |
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55 In this case, the cost of using revision control might hardly seem |
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56 worth considering, since \emph{without} it, failure is almost |
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57 guaranteed. |
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58 |
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59 On the other hand, a one-person ``quick hack'' might seem like a poor |
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60 place to use a revision control tool, because surely the cost of using |
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61 one must be close to the overall cost of the project. Right? |
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62 |
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63 Mercurial uniquely supports \emph{both} of these scales of |
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64 development. You can learn the basics in just a few minutes, and due |
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65 to its low overhead, you can apply revision control to the smallest of |
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66 projects with ease. Its simplicity means you won't have a lot of |
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67 abstruse concepts or command sequences competing for mental space with |
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68 whatever you're \emph{really} trying to do. At the same time, |
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69 Mercurial's high performance and peer-to-peer nature let you scale |
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70 painlessly to handle large projects. |
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71 |
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72 No revision control tool can rescue a poorly run project, but a good |
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73 choice of tools can make a huge difference to the fluidity with which |
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74 you can work on a project. |
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75 |
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76 \subsection{The many names of revision control} |
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77 |
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78 Revision control is a diverse field, so much so that it doesn't |
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79 actually have a single name or acronym. Here are a few of the more |
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80 common names and acronyms you'll encounter: |
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81 \begin{itemize} |
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82 \item Revision control (RCS) |
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83 \item Software configuration management (SCM), or configuration management |
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84 \item Source code management |
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85 \item Source code control, or source control |
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86 \item Version control (VCS) |
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87 \end{itemize} |
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88 Some people claim that these terms actually have different meanings, |
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89 but in practice they overlap so much that there's no agreed or even |
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90 useful way to tease them apart. |
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91 |
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92 \section{A short history of revision control} |
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93 |
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94 The best known of the old-time revision control tools is SCCS (Source |
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95 Code Control System), which Marc Rochkind wrote at Bell Labs, in the |
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96 early 1970s. SCCS operated on individual files, and required every |
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97 person working on a project to have access to a shared workspace on a |
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98 single system. Only one person could modify a file at any time; |
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99 arbitration for access to files was via locks. It was common for |
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100 people to lock files, and later forget to unlock them, preventing |
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101 anyone else from modifying those files without the help of an |
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102 administrator. |
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103 |
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104 Walter Tichy developed a free alternative to SCCS in the early 1980s; |
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105 he called his program RCS (Revison Control System). Like SCCS, RCS |
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106 required developers to work in a single shared workspace, and to lock |
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107 files to prevent multiple people from modifying them simultaneously. |
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108 |
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109 Later in the 1980s, Dick Grune used RCS as a building block for a set |
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110 of shell scripts he initially called cmt, but then renamed to CVS |
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111 (Concurrent Versions System). The big innovation of CVS was that it |
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112 let developers work simultaneously and somewhat independently in their |
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113 own personal workspaces. The personal workspaces prevented developers |
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114 from stepping on each other's toes all the time, as was common with |
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115 SCCS and RCS. Each developer had a copy of every project file, and |
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116 could modify their copies independently. They had to merge their |
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117 edits prior to committing changes to the central repository. |
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118 |
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119 Brian Berliner took Grune's original scripts and rewrote them in~C, |
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120 releasing in 1989 the code that has since developed into the modern |
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121 version of CVS. CVS subsequently acquired the ability to operate over |
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122 a network connection, giving it a client/server architecture. CVS's |
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123 architecture is centralised; only the server has a copy of the history |
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124 of the project. Client workspaces just contain copies of recent |
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125 versions of the project's files, and a little metadata to tell them |
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126 where the server is. CVS has been enormously successful; it is |
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127 probably the world's most widely used revision control system. |
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128 |
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129 In the early 1990s, Sun Microsystems developed an early distributed |
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130 revision control system, called TeamWare. A TeamWare workspace |
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131 contains a complete copy of the project's history. TeamWare has no |
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132 notion of a central repository. (CVS relied upon RCS for its history |
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133 storage; TeamWare used SCCS.) |
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134 |
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135 As the 1990s progressed, awareness grew of a number of problems with |
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136 CVS. It records simultaneous changes to multiple files individually, |
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137 instead of grouping them together as a single logically atomic |
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138 operation. It does not manage its file hierarchy well; it is easy to |
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139 make a mess of a repository by renaming files and directories. Worse, |
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140 its source code is difficult to read and maintain, which made the |
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141 ``pain level'' of fixing these architectural problems prohibitive. |
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142 |
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143 In 2001, Jim Blandy and Karl Fogel, two developers who had worked on |
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144 CVS, started a project to replace it with a tool that would have a |
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145 better architecture and cleaner code. The result, Subversion, does |
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146 not stray from CVS's centralised client/server model, but it adds |
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147 multi-file atomic commits, better namespace management, and a number |
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148 of other features that make it a generally better tool than CVS. |
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149 Since its initial release, it has rapidly grown in popularity. |
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150 |
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151 More or less simultaneously, Graydon Hoare began working on an |
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152 ambitious distributed revision control system that he named Monotone. |
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153 While Monotone addresses many of CVS's design flaws and has a |
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154 peer-to-peer architecture, it goes beyond earlier (and subsequent) |
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155 revision control tools in a number of innovative ways. It uses |
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156 cryptographic hashes as identifiers, and has an integral notion of |
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157 ``trust'' for code from different sources. |
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158 |
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159 Mercurial began life in 2005. While a few aspects of its design are |
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160 influenced by Monotone, Mercurial focuses on ease of use, high |
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161 performance, and scalability to very large projects. |
155
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162 |
219
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163 \section{Trends in revision control} |
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164 |
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165 There has been an unmistakable trend in the development and use of |
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166 revision control tools over the past four decades, as people have |
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167 become familiar with the capabilities of their tools and constrained |
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168 by their limitations. |
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169 |
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170 The first generation began by managing single files on individual |
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171 computers. Although these tools represented a huge advance over |
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172 ad-hoc manual revision control, their locking model and reliance on a |
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173 single computer limited them to small, tightly-knit teams. |
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174 |
219
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175 The second generation loosened these constraints by moving to |
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176 network-centered architectures, and managing entire projects at a |
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177 time. As projects grew larger, they ran into new problems. With |
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178 clients needing to talk to servers very frequently, server scaling |
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179 became an issue for large projects. An unreliable network connection |
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180 could prevent remote users from being able to talk to the server at |
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181 all. As open source projects started making read-only access |
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182 available anonymously to anyone, people without commit privileges |
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183 found that they could not use the tools to interact with a project in |
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184 a natural way, as they could not record their changes. |
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185 |
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186 The current generation of revision control tools is peer-to-peer in |
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187 nature. All of these systems have dropped the dependency on a single |
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188 central server, and allow people to distribute their revision control |
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189 data to where it's actually needed. Collaboration over the Internet |
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190 has moved from constrained by technology to a matter of choice and |
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191 consensus. Modern tools can operate offline indefinitely and |
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192 autonomously, with a network connection only needed when syncing |
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193 changes with another repository. |
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194 |
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195 \section{A few of the advantages of distributed revision control} |
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196 |
219
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197 Even though distributed revision control tools have for several years |
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198 been as robust and usable as their previous-generation counterparts, |
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199 people using older tools have not yet necessarily woken up to their |
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200 advantages. There are a number of ways in which distributed tools |
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201 shine relative to centralised ones. |
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202 |
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203 For an individual developer, distributed tools are almost always much |
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204 faster than centralised tools. This is for a simple reason: a |
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205 centralised tool needs to talk over the network for many common |
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206 operations, because most metadata is stored in a single copy on the |
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207 central server. A distributed tool stores all of its metadata |
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208 locally. All else being equal, talking over the network adds overhead |
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209 to a centralised tool. Don't underestimate the value of a snappy, |
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210 responsive tool: you're going to spend a lot of time interacting with |
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211 your revision control software. |
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212 |
219
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213 Distributed tools are indifferent to the vagaries of your server |
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214 infrastructure, again because they replicate metadata to so many |
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215 locations. If you use a centralised system and your server catches |
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216 fire, you'd better hope that your backup media are reliable, and that |
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217 your last backup was recent and actually worked. With a distributed |
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218 tool, you have many backups available on every contributor's computer. |
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219 |
219
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220 The reliability of your network will affect distributed tools far less |
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221 than it will centralised tools. You can't even use a centralised tool |
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222 without a network connection, except for a few highly constrained |
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223 commands. With a distributed tool, if your network connection goes |
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224 down while you're working, you may not even notice. The only thing |
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225 you won't be able to do is talk to repositories on other computers, |
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226 something that is relatively rare compared with local operations. If |
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227 you have a far-flung team of collaborators, this may be significant. |
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228 |
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229 If you take a shine to an open source project and decide that you |
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230 would like to start hacking on it, and that project uses a distributed |
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231 revision control tool, you are at once a peer with the people who |
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232 consider themselves the ``core'' of that project. If they publish |
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233 their repositories, you can immediately copy their project history, |
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234 start making changes, and record your work, using the same tools in |
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235 the same ways as insiders. By contrast, with a centralised tool, you |
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236 must use the software in a ``read only'' mode unless someone grants |
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237 you permission to commit changes to their central server. Until then, |
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238 you won't be able to record changes, and your local modifications will |
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239 be at risk of corruption any time you try to update your client's view |
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240 of the repository. |
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241 |
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242 \subsection{For open source projects} |
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243 |
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244 \subsection{For commercial projects} |
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245 |
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246 \subsection{Myths about distributed revision control} |
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247 |
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248 \subsubsection{Distributed tools encourage projects to fork} |
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249 |
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250 \section{Why choose Mercurial?} |
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251 |
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252 |
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253 %%% Local Variables: |
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254 %%% mode: latex |
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255 %%% TeX-master: "00book" |
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256 %%% End: |