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You probably don't remember that CVS was a wonderful improvement over RCS just like Subversion was a big step forward from CVS. Git is awesome but someday it w

You probably don't remember that CVS was a wonderful improvement over RCS just like Subversion was a big step forward from CVS. Git is awesome but someday it will be outdated too.

kayamon 11y ago
The choice of version control system isn't especially relevant. A website like SF/GitHub is about building a surrounding infrastructure around the core VCS, not the VCS itself. But SF never did that. It just took CVS, and added a thin web portal on top. Once you had the address of the CVS server, there was never any incentive to _stay_ on the SourceForge website for any longer than you had to. You'd just download the code and move on. GitHub isn't like that. Code is treated as a first-class citizen, and the flow of the whole website is about letting people _explore_ code, and follow its changes over time. Git may well become outdated, but that has nothing to do with the principles at work here. You could make "CvsHub" along the same "code-first" principles and it'd work great. A code hosting site needs to be about breaking down barriers between the code and its users, and that has nothing to do with CVS-vs-Git.
- tmd83 11y ago
  Sourceforge UI could be improved a lot but that doesn't mean the SCM has nothing to do with GitHub's success. They have thought it up alright but the GitHub model of network and connection is the extension of the natural flow of GitHub. And I'm sure implementing such a model of connection, forking and merging would be a whole lot more complicated to implement on top of CVS. Sourceforge was a time when WebUI, webapps weren't that mainstream. Comparing that with GitHub when everyone wants thing to be much more web centric, when you a popular DVCS is ignoring what the past was like. Also it always felt like Sourceforge UI was primarily for the users of software and not the coder, which is very important for the more regular projects (not dev tools or libraries).
- the_ancient 11y ago
  >The choice of version control system isn't especially relevant. Actually it is, Distributed revision control has alot do to with GitHub's success as does the rest of their site. With out CVS,Subversion, the other Centralized systems are just not as good by the nature for open source, peer-2-peer development models that SF was catering to. To believe GitHub could have been just as successful it is was called SVNHub is to deny reality. GitHub owes most of its success to the underlying technology of Git.
alkonaut 11y ago
Git is powerful, but it's certainly not the end of version control. Most importantly, it does centralized version control (which is what most of us are using in practice) very poorly. features like binary file locks, large binaries, large repo /history and small working copy are either unsupported or only being added with extensions. Setting up a multi-gig git repo for hundreds of users with binary assets that require full history but also require locking etc. is painful as hell.

You probably don't remember that CVS was a wonderful improvement over RCS just like Subversion was a big step forward from CVS. Git is awesome but someday it will be outdated too.

kayamon 11y ago

The choice of version control system isn't especially relevant. A website like SF/GitHub is about building a surrounding infrastructure around the core VCS, not the VCS itself. But SF never did that. It just took CVS, and added a thin web portal on top. Once you had the address of the CVS server, there was never any incentive to _stay_ on the SourceForge website for any longer than you had to. You'd just download the code and move on. GitHub isn't like that. Code is treated as a first-class citizen, and the flow of the whole website is about letting people _explore_ code, and follow its changes over time. Git may well become outdated, but that has nothing to do with the principles at work here. You could make "CvsHub" along the same "code-first" principles and it'd work great. A code hosting site needs to be about breaking down barriers between the code and its users, and that has nothing to do with CVS-vs-Git.

tmd83 11y ago
Sourceforge UI could be improved a lot but that doesn't mean the SCM has nothing to do with GitHub's success. They have thought it up alright but the GitHub model of network and connection is the extension of the natural flow of GitHub. And I'm sure implementing such a model of connection, forking and merging would be a whole lot more complicated to implement on top of CVS. Sourceforge was a time when WebUI, webapps weren't that mainstream. Comparing that with GitHub when everyone wants thing to be much more web centric, when you a popular DVCS is ignoring what the past was like. Also it always felt like Sourceforge UI was primarily for the users of software and not the coder, which is very important for the more regular projects (not dev tools or libraries).
the_ancient 11y ago
>The choice of version control system isn't especially relevant. Actually it is, Distributed revision control has alot do to with GitHub's success as does the rest of their site. With out CVS,Subversion, the other Centralized systems are just not as good by the nature for open source, peer-2-peer development models that SF was catering to. To believe GitHub could have been just as successful it is was called SVNHub is to deny reality. GitHub owes most of its success to the underlying technology of Git.

alkonaut 11y ago

Git is powerful, but it's certainly not the end of version control. Most importantly, it does centralized version control (which is what most of us are using in practice) very poorly. features like binary file locks, large binaries, large repo /history and small working copy are either unsupported or only being added with extensions. Setting up a multi-gig git repo for hundreds of users with binary assets that require full history but also require locking etc. is painful as hell.