Re: [tlug] Open-source repository question

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

John Fremlin writes:

 > I would say that git has an implicit theory of patches.

Of course.  In a sense every VCS must have an implicit theory of
patches (and unfortunately in Darcs's case, it doesn't entirely match
the explicit one).

Unfortunately for git's theory, it suffers from the same bug that
Darcs does, namely the assumption that changes that do not conflict
textually do not conflict semantically.  For example, it's quite
possible in git to commit a change to a function prototype in foo.h
without making the corresponding change in foo.c or in any callers.
You will of course get no warning until you compile.

Now, if you're Linus (or on a more personal note, Curt), you can keep
all that in your head.  I think that's why Curt can get away with
deprecating cheap branching as he did.  But when you get to the scale
of the Linux kernel, it don't work so well, and you start needing
cheaping branching so bad you invent it. :-)

You could also argue that that is not the VCS's job.  But I think
that's what's buzzing around the back of Linus's head when he keeps
insisting "git is just a stupid content tracker, it's not really a VCS
or SCM".