[cvsnt] Re: CVSNT and Subversion comparison

[Tony Hoyle]

Gerhard Fiedler wrote:

> I'm not sure what that means, but when I go to the cvsnt.com page, I don't
> seem to get a choice of download -- the only version I see is "CVSNT
> 2.5.01.1927", and I can't find an "archive" link there. When I go to the
> "open source project" page (the wiki), the download link takes me back to
> the MarchHare cvsnt.com page.

http://www.cvsnt.org/archive

It's linked in http://www.cvsnt.org/wiki/Download, which could probably 
be better advertised but is linked from the main wiki page.

> I don't see release notes, history of stable releases, nothing of that
> kind. They used to be there, IIRC, but some time ago these things kind of
> vanished, it seems. 

There are release notes in every stable release.  The history is kept 
largely up to date (http://paris.nodomain.org/blog/index.php/history at 
the moment... linked from the old wiki HistoryPage) but I don't do it 
for every interim release.

There's also the Changelog in the source tree and of course the 
cvsnt-commits list that lists absolutely everything.

> This may be so. But there's nothing (except from your phrase above) that
> tells me that this is so. No release information, for current and past
> releases, no bug database.

That'll be in the release notes, unless you're after more?  You could 
extract the changelog from the source but it's often not that useful 
unless you're into the flow of development.

Glen's idea sounds useful if I can find a good implementation of it.

> But when the svn guys put out a stable version, they publish a list with
> everything that has been changed in that version WRT the last stable
> version. User-visible fixes and new features, developer-visible things,
> AFAICT everything. Kind of a change log, like what you can get out of a
> traditional bug tracker; something very familiar to me and probably most

Sounds like a changelog... they're not that useful unless you are a 
developer normally.  Comments may make sense when I commit, but don't 
always when I read them back a few days later...

> So some people know when that got fixed, but I don't, and nobody really
> tells me. You say that this is what MarchHare and pro support is for, and
> that's ok. I don't have a problem with that. But I also know that when I
> see a project where these things are more transparently, and when I see a

I try to be as transparent as possible - for example I avoid private 
email conversations... everything happens on the list, good or bad.  The 
checkins (including my somtimes frustrated comments) are all published 
as they happen.

> project where the user documentation is in sync with the code, I like it

The manual is pretty good now compared to what it was a while ago.  The 
move to docbook helped there, as I could finally edit it properly.  The 
wiki and user contributed stuff is up to the individual contributors to 
keep up to date although there really aren't that many changes that 
require it.


> Where is noted what is noted? Can this be found before installing the
> version? See, it all comes back to the same theme: there's obviously lots
> of information around that's somewhere but not easily accessible. One has

The list gets the information first.  The history page is then updated 
and that's RSS syndicated so it's pushed to anyone interested.

> Again, how would I know this? It is nowhere published, according to you
> this list is the ultimate source of information, and just recently there
> was a post (on this ultimate source of information) about someone having a
> problem with that...

They subsequently posted that 2.5.01 worked after all, and it was just a 
testing snafu.

> I /need/ something that tells me "in versions x, y and z file names are not
> allowed to contain '+'" and "in versions a, b and c file names are not

In every version of cvshome.org CVS and CVSNT before 2.0.58 files are 
not allowed to contain + if you do cvs edit or cvs watch (might be just 
directories, which was the initial bug report when I first heard about it).

2.0.58d fixed this but had a problem with edit/watch and &.  The fix was 
put in in November, which missed the release window for 58d, so it was 
in one of the 2.0.62 interim builds.  The fix was pushed out 
individually to a couple of support customers but mosly people affected 
just went to the interim release (not that many people IIRC).

> Agreed on all that. But this wasn't the core of what I wanted to say. It's
> not about code quality or bug counts or time to fix or how to fix, it's
> about transparency. To me, as a casual distant observer, subversion
> development seems a lot more transparent than cvsnt, of which I'm an active
> user and close observer. Which scares me -- and might scare me away.

I'm sorry if you fell it's not transparent - that's one of the things I 
try to get right and I've obviously failed in your case.

> One single thing that would probably take away most of my current
> insecurity about cvsnt would be a list of all things done, published with
> every release. And access to these lists of previous releases. This is

The changelog has every commit since 2003.  Something in a better format 
would be useful (the cvsnt-commits newsgroup isn't a lot better, 
readability wise).

Something like a web page saying:

Todo
<list of tasks, est. time and/or release number>
Finished
<list of tasks, release number>

Haven't seen anything like that that wasn't integrated with a huge 
framework though - I prefer simplicity.

Tony