Talk:Subversion (software)
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[edit] What?
I've read this article twice and have no idea what this thing is. The intro to this article currently reads: "Subversion is an open source application for revision control. Also commonly referred to as svn or SVN, Subversion is designed specifically to be a modern replacement for CVS and shares a number of the same key developers." Could this be dumbed down a bit? The only way to decode this jargon is to click on the links to "revision control" and "CVS." "Key developers" doesn't even have a link. I flatter myself that I know what open source is already, but don't get how it applies here. I think the average reader should be able to understand the subject of an article without clicking on links - their purpose is for additional information, not basic lucidity. I don't mean to criticize, and I hope you will appreciate the perspective of a non-techie. CClio333 01:34, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
- I concur. I have a basic idea what version control is, but beyond the first paragraph everything is jibberish. This article is clearly written for experts, i.e. people who are using cvs and persuaded to switch to svn. Anton 24.201.100.166 15:16, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
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- Or fanboys who never thought to make it readable by normal people. Being Wikipedia, I'd take that bet. But yeah, everything after the intro needs rewritten. Chris Cunningham 13:25, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
- I concur. I am a developer who uses subversion every day and I must say that this article is too long, too technical and very un-encylopedic. I propose that the vast majority of it should just be deleted concerning all its features and branching abilities. Kingmundi 21:32, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Key Benefits (Marketing Speak?)
The list of "Key Benefits" contains vague words that can't be quantified. It sounds more like what might be seen on a product box rather than what should be in an encyclopedia.
For example: "Low IT infrastructure requirements (servers and bandwidth)" - compared to what? "Minimal training costs" - Need a comparison of another system's training costs. "Rich feature set" - More or less rich than similar products? And does "rich" mean there are more features, or the same number of features but with higher quality? "Robust" - Does that mean it doesn't crash often? If that's the case, what data is there to say it's anymore robust than CVS or any other versioning system?
There's a lot of other content on the page I think needs improving to provide a neutral point of view. Raisenero 11:19, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
You are stating it is a key benefit, that version history is retained across renames, and further below you state "Subversion currently implements the renaming of files and directories as a 'copy' to the new name followed by a 'delete' of the old name." Which of both is correct? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.56.169.253 (talk) 17:28, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
[edit] CollabNet is the Developer???
My understanding is that CollabNet were one of the original sponsors of the Subversion project, and yes they provide hosting for the project, and yes a *few* of the developers still work for CollabNet BUT:
- Most of the developers on the project (those with a commercial interest) work for Google, not CollabNet [1]
- It is one of the few truly successful "Open Source" projects, so the developers *are* the community?
Therefore should "Developer" not be contributed back to the community that actually contributes to the project? 85.210.36.63 13:24, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
- Meh. "CollabNet plus community", then. svn is fairly unusual in having been planned and developed by a company as an open project from scratch, so I think it's worth keeping them noted. Chris Cunningham 13:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] General Explanation/Description
I've come to this page knowing nothing about subversion and wanted to understand what it does in a general sense and have left knowing no more than when I came. Please include a general description section to bring noobs up to speed. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.16.58.72 (talk • contribs).
- I am in the same position! What on earth is this thing? Could someone please write an introduction that actually explains what this is about? 86.138.122.214 16:14, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
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- I think it is somehow normal that it is a bit less understandable to non-developers. In any case, the leading sentence leads directly to revision control. Are you sure your criticism doesn't apply to the latter, rather than to this article? —Gennaro Prota•Talk 16:54, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] No source given: claim that it shares a number of key developers with CVS
"Subversion is designed specifically to be a modern replacement for CVS and shares a number of the same key developers."
Got a source for that? I see the CVS Authors list: cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/cvs/ccvs/AUTHORS?view=auto and the SVN committers list: svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/COMMITTERS and didn't find any overlap among the core. (I can't make the above http links because the spam test is inaccessible.) 86.53.37.59 13:45, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
One author in common is mentioned on www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/1438 - who else? 86.53.37.59 17:24, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Costs
Costs are proportional to change size, not data size. Which size is meant here? --Abdull 08:28, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Official pronunciation
Is Subversion pronounced with the stress on the first syllable or, as if it came from the verb "to subvert", the second? Robert K S
- I'm pretty sure it's pronounced like the English word "subversion", with the emphasis on the second syllable. It'd be pretty obtuse to demand otherwise. Chris Cunningham 15:57, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Binaries Section
The "binaries" section has been tagged for some time as an unencyclopedic advertising board for software projects. This doesn't belong on this article, and I don't even think it warrants a list of projects related to Subversion article. If it doesn't get better soon I'm going to remove it again. Chris Cunningham 10:01, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
- Five days and the only contribution has been to (surprise!) tack yet another link on. Removing again. Chris Cunningham 11:02, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
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- I can understand eliminating the "related" products and the IDEs which just happen to have Subversion integration. I do disagree with removing the links for Subversion binaries (especially the official sites) and Subversion clients. When I implemented Subversion for the first time earlier this year, the Wiki page for Subversion was my starting point for researching clients available for the product. Before removing so much from the article you really should have discussed what parts of the content were inappropriate rather than just saying the equivalent of "if someone else doesn't fix it I'm going to remove it". --StuffOfInterest 11:57, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
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- The list was tagged for some time, and it had become obvious that (like all other lists on Wikipedia) it was encouraging people to tack things on for the sake of completion. I can see the point in including a small section on CollabNet's distribution policy (though such a thing isn't particularly common to WP articles) but not a list of clients; wikipedia isn't a product guide. There are better places to list SVN clients, places where unsourced commentary is not only permitted but encouraged. I'd rather that this article concentrated on describing SVN itself. Chris Cunningham 14:16, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
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- This content has been there for a long time before recently getting removed. I think it is very useful information, although I could understand why others might not want in inside this article. Don't destroy several years of work without moving this list to it's own page or something like that. Thumperwad has been simply deleting the results of several years of edits. Cshay 21:59, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
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- Move it to its own page if you want, though it's no more encyclopedic than list of countries with KFC restaurants and would probably suffer the same fate. I've followed procedure in taking this to talk. Don't use obviously self-perpetuating non-justifications like "it's been here a long time" to defend keeping it in this article. Chris Cunningham 08:57, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
- I just ask you why this material has been in this article for more than a year if it was unwanted? I found it very useful. 71.198.35.219 09:14, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
- Chris, I didn't realize until a few seconds ago that you were Thumperwad, hence my recent revert. If we move this to a new page, what is the best way to do so and give it the best chance of surviving a RFD? Anyway, feel free to move it, and add a link to the new page in it's place but I don't think the information should be outright deleted from wikipedia. Cshay 09:21, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
- Move it to its own page if you want, though it's no more encyclopedic than list of countries with KFC restaurants and would probably suffer the same fate. I've followed procedure in taking this to talk. Don't use obviously self-perpetuating non-justifications like "it's been here a long time" to defend keeping it in this article. Chris Cunningham 08:57, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
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- It's ward with an R, not that it matters. The best way to ensure it survives an AfD is to transform it into useful, relevant prose. However, if this was ever going to have happened, it would have happened before this point. Tagging the article didn't help. Removing the list didn't help. This is listcruft, and nobody is interested in improving it. Feel free to work on software which uses Subversion, the new sub-article. Chris Cunningham 10:03, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
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[edit] Uncertainty of Subversion popularity
The claim is made that "Subversion has replaced CVS as the most popular VCS used in open source projects." yet I'm not sure if the reference provided is a good representation of the open source community as a whole. The statistics given are dependent on a project being registered with the site. From personal experience I know Subversions *is* a popular alternative to CVS in open source projects, but I can't say from that same experience that it is *more* popular than CVS in the open source world. Personally, it's seemed about even when searching sourceforge.net for software.
Also the statement feels like it slightly limits the scope of the article by implicitly associating Subversion with open source projects as opposed to *any* project (open or otherwise) as no statistics are given concerning closed software (nor would it be likely that they could).
I suggest this statement be replaced with "Subversion is currently a popular VCS alternative to CVS, particularly among many open source projects." as this statement is a little more neutral by not qualifying Subversion's popularity. Also, it is less susceptible to becoming out of date as statistics could shift significantly. If they do, this alternate statement would still be sound as long as a significant percentage of projects used Subversion. Also, this way, the reference link can be kept in place to reinforce the new statement. MerlinYoda 16:47, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
I've applied my suggestion due to a lack of any feedback against it. MerlinYoda 17:05, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
[edit] "... particularly among open source projects"
"Subversion is currently a popular alternative to CVS (another widely used VCS), particularly among open source projects."
I think this sentence is misleading, since it indicates that SVN is not as popular in commercial software development, which - at least as far as my experiences are concerened - isn't true. At least in my experience, Subversion is one of the most widely used source control systems in commercial software development, if not even THE most popular one besides CVS. Unfortunately I have no references available to "prove" it ...
[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Subversion.png
Image:Subversion.png is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.
Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.
If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.
BetacommandBot (talk) 06:25, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Paragraph "History"
This stub can be filled with some information I found in the German article. Short content:
- parallel to the political term "subversion"
- combining with the meaning of sub version
[edit] External links
This software is quite popular - people keep adding external links to the article. The unencyclopedic ones are removed, however. If you find the link list useful, some of them are here--Alvin-cs ✉ 17:41, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
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can't find the server at software.newsforge.com. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.175.141.68 (talk) 09:09, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
