[ntp:hackers] Re: public server listing

Brad Knowles brad at stop.mail-abuse.org
Tue Nov 9 07:11:02 PST 2004


At 2:29 PM +0000 2004-11-09, Paul Vixie wrote:

>>  There are too many things that bk does that cvs cannot do.
>
>  i doubt that.  if freebsd and bind8 and bind9 can get by with cvs,
>  then cvs probably has more capabilities than will ever be needed by
>  ntp.  whether bitkeeper has features ntp doesn't need isn't important.

	I can't speak for the use of CVS with BIND, but I can tell you 
that FreeBSD is moving away from it for all interim work, instead 
doing that within Perforce.  Stuff is only moved out of Perforce and 
into CVS when it's ready to be released to the general community. 
For Zope, everything is going to Subversion -- and the same will 
probably happen for Python and everything at python.org, according to 
the internal discussions I'm hearing.

	Given the capabilities of cvsup, I doubt that CVS will go away 
completely from the FreeBSD world, but it is most definitely being 
seriously side-lined.  The same has been happening for a while with 
other projects and their use of CVS versus Perforce, Subversion, or 
BitKeeper.


	I can't believe that all of these projects are wrong and that 
there isn't some real, valid, reason why this is happening.

>  i'm getting the sense that the tools (twiki, bitkeeper) are way more
>  important to a lot of you than the software (ntp) itself.

	I can't speak for the problems that Harlan has had with CVS, 
although I can say that several people have told me that the typical 
problems with CVS outlined on the BitKeeper comparison page are 
accurate in so far as they go.


	I can say that I believe that the capabilities of tools are 
important to us, and if the capabilities we require are not provided 
by one tool, I don't think we have any fear of switching to another 
tool that does provide the capabilities we need/want.

	Certainly, Majordomo wasn't doing what I wanted in a mailing list 
manager.  So, given consensus within the group, I switched to 
Mailman.  I'm now much happier, and I believe that the user community 
is much better served.

	I can't say for sure, but I believe that Steve would feel the 
same way about TWiki, if someone could show us a tool that achieves 
all the various things we need/want, and does so in a way that is 
better and easier to use.  For that matter, if someone came along 
with a better bug/issue tracking system than bugzilla, I doubt that 
it would take too much work to convince us to switch.


	Certainly, I don't feel that I have any particular allegiance to 
any particular tool or technology.  If they serve my needs/wants, I 
use them.  If they don't, then I use something that does.

	I don't think that I am unusual in this respect.

>                                                             this isn't
>  nec'ily a bad thing as long as you document it.  i, myself, prefer
>  stone knives and bearskins because they're reliable and i know how
>  to use them and they don't distract me from the meat.  ymmv.

	Stone knives and bearskins work fine, up to a point.  In my 
experience, sometimes you want to try a chainsaw instead.

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

     -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
     Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755

   SAGE member since 1995.  See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.



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