[ANN] Monticello Versioning

Julian Fitzell julian at beta4.com
Wed Jul 23 20:40:26 UTC 2003


Avi Bryant wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Jul 2003, Julian Fitzell wrote:
> 
> 
>>Sure, though Daniel could also just send a generated changeset and you
>>could apply that to your image and save a new version.  But whatever...
>>there a few benefits to doing it your way.
> 
> 
> Yes, like actually retaining the version history - if Daniel produced his
> changes by merging in some other versions, we would want to record that,
> or we'd be in trouble when we wanted to merge again later.
> I really don't think it makes sense to "regress" back to changesets,
> except for when backwards compatibility with, eg, the update stream is
> needed.

Well you don't want to take the merge history of the patch and add it to 
yours because the history of the patch would include version along the 
branch that you didn't want (eg. if I'm applying D'-E' to C  I don't 
want C' and B' listed in the new version's history).

Sometimes you want to apply the changes and make it look like a new 
version; that's all I'm saying.  So yes, in some cases having version 
information is a benefit (and that was the main benefit I was referring 
to) but it isn't always a benefit. :)

>>It does seem to me though, that the tendency would then be to always
>>send around smaller patches rather than full versions.  And the more you
>>do that, the less likely you are to have all the versions you need to
>>actually recreate a full version.  Sounds a little like a slippery slope
>>towards a central repository.
> 
> 
> Well, that's a matter of policy.  I would tend towards something like:
> 
> - all stable releases are made available as full versions
> - all intermediary versions are saved as patches *against the
> preceding full release*, not against another intermediary version
> 
> That way as long as the stable releases are widely available, there
> shouldn't be any problem.  I agree that if you got into the habit of
> distributing patches of patches of patches of a full version, then the
> system becomes much less robust.
> 
> However, as Daniel points out, if you just gzip the version, it's not that
> much space anyway.  So this might all be premature optimization (which is
> why I haven't implemented the feature yet...).

Let's hope it isn't needed... it sure sounds complicated :)

Julian




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