6 ms·

Good god. Seriously? There are so many much better options, and of course the obvious Git... I remember working with CVS, it was horrendous; I'm surprised a pr

Good god. Seriously? There are so many much better options, and of course the obvious Git... I remember working with CVS, it was horrendous; I'm surprised a project of this size is still on CVS.

andrewchambers 9y ago
I don't think they like GPL, so the number of better options decreases rapidly.
- bluejekyll 9y ago
  Is there some reason this would come into play for the source management tool?
  - yellowapple 9y ago
    Ideally, the source management tool(s) would be included with the OS (so that the OS can self-host), which means that it's a factor for the same reason why OpenBSD has preferred non-copyleft licenses for (most of) the rest of the system.
saghm 9y ago
IIRC, Gentoo still uses CVS as well (which is arguably more fundamental to the project since it's source-based). The original creator of the OS now works on Funtoo, which is based on Gentoo but uses git.
- jbergstroem 9y ago
  Switched roughly two years ago: https://www.gentoo.org/news/2015/08/12/git-migration.html https://www.gentoo.org/news/2015/08/12/git-migration.html It was an interesting migration project to follow seeing how the portage tree is huge.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- bch 9y ago
  > IIRC, Gentoo still uses CVS... Somebody corrected this (Gentoo VC software) later, but NetBSD does also still use CVS. Repo conversions are indeed big, interesting projects. I've closely-witnessed/been-peripherally-involved in a few, and there were some interesting papers written about various conversions years ago[0], when both git and mercurial were new and iirc monotone still had interest. [0] both Mozilla and Sun were publishing their analysis and growing pains
ams6110 9y ago
CVS works for them, so they keep using it. The devil you know, etc.
- bluejekyll 9y ago
  SVN is a relatively painless migration, and is better simply because of a single changlist number to track like perforce. Personally I advocate for Git, in leu of that, mercurial. CVS was so painful, it's just hard for me to imagine that people aren't actively figuring out a way off of it. It's literally one step above RCS...
  - ams6110 9y ago
    When all your tooling is built around source repository X, and you understand how it all works, and you understand its quirks and how to avoid them, and you have demonstrated repeatedly the ability to hit release target dates consistently year after year, what then is the sound rationale to switch to source repository Y, and spend the considerable effort to change everything, just so you can keep doing what you are doing now?
    - bluejekyll 9y ago
      I'm impressed that they are able to do that. I'm not going to enumerate all the advantages of Git like tools over CVS here. I do know the pain of migration. I've done it at multiple companies, and am currently figuring it out for an extremely large codebase to get off of Perforce and onto Git. There are significant productivity gains with Git across organizations that make it a worthwhile investment.
  - X86BSD 9y ago
    I personally prefer Fossil. It's a really nice little SCM with all sorts of neat features like built in wiki and great documentation.
- azinman2 9y ago
  It's interesting to me to see this project be both so innovative in security domains, yet so backwards in usability. I was trying to install openbsd on a new router this week, and I had a hell of a time trying to repartition the disk such that it didn't pre-allocate partitions for X11 (which I had no use for). I could delete partitions but then I got empty spaces and seemingly no good way to resize via the primitive CLI. I googled around and found this thread [1], where someone suggested a GUI installer to help novice users install it, which got this reply: "Uh no. The OpenBSD installation routine is perfect as is. I would not want to see a GUI installer on my favourite BSD." Really, perfect? Could not be possibly improved? And because you don't want a GUI, no one should have one? All the rest of the replies were similar to boot. I went back to Linux as I can only imagine what the rest of running it is like. Sometimes old stubborn cranks can really get in the way of progress. [1] http://daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=8580 http://daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=8580
Zelmor 9y ago
It is one of the reasons, according to past contributors, why the project participation stagnates. Old devs have their flags and config all set up, and don't want to change to a new source control system just to get new kids on the block. A good example of how bds operating systems are being developed for the developers themselves, not for public use.

Good god. Seriously? There are so many much better options, and of course the obvious Git... I remember working with CVS, it was horrendous; I'm surprised a project of this size is still on CVS.

andrewchambers 9y ago

I don't think they like GPL, so the number of better options decreases rapidly.

bluejekyll 9y ago
Is there some reason this would come into play for the source management tool?
- yellowapple 9y ago
  Ideally, the source management tool(s) would be included with the OS (so that the OS can self-host), which means that it's a factor for the same reason why OpenBSD has preferred non-copyleft licenses for (most of) the rest of the system.

saghm 9y ago

IIRC, Gentoo still uses CVS as well (which is arguably more fundamental to the project since it's source-based). The original creator of the OS now works on Funtoo, which is based on Gentoo but uses git.

jbergstroem 9y ago
Switched roughly two years ago: https://www.gentoo.org/news/2015/08/12/git-migration.html https://www.gentoo.org/news/2015/08/12/git-migration.html It was an interesting migration project to follow seeing how the portage tree is huge.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
bch 9y ago
> IIRC, Gentoo still uses CVS... Somebody corrected this (Gentoo VC software) later, but NetBSD does also still use CVS. Repo conversions are indeed big, interesting projects. I've closely-witnessed/been-peripherally-involved in a few, and there were some interesting papers written about various conversions years ago[0], when both git and mercurial were new and iirc monotone still had interest. [0] both Mozilla and Sun were publishing their analysis and growing pains

ams6110 9y ago

CVS works for them, so they keep using it. The devil you know, etc.

bluejekyll 9y ago
SVN is a relatively painless migration, and is better simply because of a single changlist number to track like perforce. Personally I advocate for Git, in leu of that, mercurial. CVS was so painful, it's just hard for me to imagine that people aren't actively figuring out a way off of it. It's literally one step above RCS...
- ams6110 9y ago
  When all your tooling is built around source repository X, and you understand how it all works, and you understand its quirks and how to avoid them, and you have demonstrated repeatedly the ability to hit release target dates consistently year after year, what then is the sound rationale to switch to source repository Y, and spend the considerable effort to change everything, just so you can keep doing what you are doing now?
  - bluejekyll 9y ago
    I'm impressed that they are able to do that. I'm not going to enumerate all the advantages of Git like tools over CVS here. I do know the pain of migration. I've done it at multiple companies, and am currently figuring it out for an extremely large codebase to get off of Perforce and onto Git. There are significant productivity gains with Git across organizations that make it a worthwhile investment.
- X86BSD 9y ago
  I personally prefer Fossil. It's a really nice little SCM with all sorts of neat features like built in wiki and great documentation.
azinman2 9y ago
It's interesting to me to see this project be both so innovative in security domains, yet so backwards in usability. I was trying to install openbsd on a new router this week, and I had a hell of a time trying to repartition the disk such that it didn't pre-allocate partitions for X11 (which I had no use for). I could delete partitions but then I got empty spaces and seemingly no good way to resize via the primitive CLI. I googled around and found this thread [1], where someone suggested a GUI installer to help novice users install it, which got this reply: "Uh no. The OpenBSD installation routine is perfect as is. I would not want to see a GUI installer on my favourite BSD." Really, perfect? Could not be possibly improved? And because you don't want a GUI, no one should have one? All the rest of the replies were similar to boot. I went back to Linux as I can only imagine what the rest of running it is like. Sometimes old stubborn cranks can really get in the way of progress. [1] http://daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=8580 http://daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=8580

Zelmor 9y ago

It is one of the reasons, according to past contributors, why the project participation stagnates. Old devs have their flags and config all set up, and don't want to change to a new source control system just to get new kids on the block. A good example of how bds operating systems are being developed for the developers themselves, not for public use.