Many of you have seen the net classic If Operating Systems Were Airlines. Today, let’s consider what the world might be like if version control systems were airlines… Before anyone gets mad, this is all in fun, OK? RCS Airlines: One of the first airlines, from way back when this whole aviation thing was new … Continue reading If Version Control Systems were Airlines
I’m a geek. I enjoy playing with different filesystems, version control systems, and, well, for that matter, radios. I have lately started to worry about the risks of silent data corruption, and as such, looked to switch my personal systems to either ZFS or btrfs, both of which offer built-in checksumming of all data and … Continue reading Debian-Live Rescue image with ZFS On Linux; Ditched btrfs
I started this blog 5 years ago. In that time, I’ve written about Linux on the desktop, photography, international peace, version control systems, ice storms, Haskell, health care, rural life, Kansas, and infants. Today I realized something: I am the #1 hit on Google when you search for smelly ducting. This will take you to … Continue reading #1 on Google
Nat Torkington, program chair, started off the day. He commented that one of the most interesting trends these days is the expansion of the Open Source ideals beyond software. Tim O’Reilly commented about the FSF’s four freedoms, and asked how we maintain them. We have to think about preserving freedoms — questions such as Free … Continue reading OSCon Wednesday
I recently wrote an article or two about distributed version control systems. I’ve been using Darcs since 2005. I switched to Darcs, in fact, 10 days after the simultaneous founding announcements of git and Mercurial. Overall, I have been happy. I continue to believe that it is the most distributed of the distributed VCSs, which … Continue reading Re-Examining Darcs & Mercurial
Today I was musing about different version control systems and merge algorithms. I’ve been thinking specifically about how I maintain Debian packages in Darcs. I tend to import upstream tarballs into one branch, and maintain the Debian packages in another, simply merging when a new upstream is released. Now, there seem to be two prevailing … Continue reading Rebase Considered Harmful
Lately I have been trying out a number of distributed version control systems (VCS or SCM). One of my tests was a real problem: I wanted to track the Linux 2.6.16.x kernel tree, apply the Xen patches to it, and pull only specific patches (for the qla2xxx driver) from 2.6.17.x into this local branch. I … Continue reading Whose Distributed VCS Is The Most Distributed?