[Cialug] git in structured environment

Jeffrey Ollie jeff at ocjtech.us
Thu Jul 10 13:53:14 CDT 2008


On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 12:45 PM, Lathrop Preston
<lathrop at prestonfam.org> wrote:
> Git might be useful however I think that
> the "normal" VCS system is much more suited to a developer shop model. We
> have developers, designers, and "production" people all working against
> common code bases. The Git model just seems to complicate the VC compared to
> say SVN if you are using it right. I can see how it might be useful in a
> distributed setup (still a bit wary) but the number of merges & conflicts
> that Git seems inclined to generate would be a pain in your average shop.

*Git* doesn't generate conflicts. For that matter neither does CVS,
Subversion, Mercurial, Bazaar, Darcs, or whatever other VCS you can
come up with.

*Developers* generate conflicts. Developers generate conflicts when
two or more people edit the same sections of code.  What separates
VCSs is how good the VCS is at helping developers resolve those
conflicts.  CVS and Subversion SUCK at this.  The distributed VCSs do
much much better jobs at helping developers resolve the conflicts
because they keep track of the merges as well as the branches and use
that information to resolve conflicts.  And before you say that CVS
and Subversion don't have this problem, they do - you just don't
realize it.  CVS and Subversion effectively force you to merge your
local changes to the central repository on every commit and prevent
you from committing unless there are no conflicts.  Distributed VCSs
let the developer delay the need to merge until a time that is more
convenient to them.

I happen to believe that Git is one of the best tools out there for
managing source code, no matter the size of your shop.  The other
distributed VCSs do a good job too and may suit you better.

Jeff


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