On Sat, 19 Jan 2019 at 21:07, Andy Smith <a...@strugglers.net> wrote: > On Fri, Jan 18, 2019 at 10:29:49AM +0000, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> > For those of you with decades of experience of CVS, you might as well > > stick with it. > > > > For someone entirely new to VCSes, I would absolutely not recommend > > CVS at all. > > Yes. After reading the various diversions into RCS and CVS history I > was a little dismayed. Indeed, I also felt dismay at the idea that newcomers might follow advice to start using these ancient, incredibly limited tools. I'd be surprised if any of the people advocating them aren't well into retirement. I'm not trying to change their minds or opinions, I totally understand wanting to stay with the familiar, because that can be productive, and I absolutely agree with recommending the use of version control, but I feel that recommending RCS or CVS for new starters is extremely poor advice. The field of version control has seriously moved on from those early tools, which were widely abandoned and code migrated to more modern tools for legitimate reasons. It's not a fad. Here's a discussion of GIT features vs CVS ... it's ten years old. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/802573/difference-between-git-and-cvs/824241#824241 (git has gained the ability to do partial checkouts since then, and bisection, which is remarkably useful). I have used CVS before I started using git, long ago. It takes some dedication to become proficient in git, probably more than CVS. But it's worth it, absolutely. And I find the ease it gives to diff and change management it adds to the fun-factor of developing code.
