Re: Reactions/PRCS Jonathan S. Shapiro (shap@eros-os.org)
Tue, 11 Apr 2000 22:45:32 -0400

> OTOH, PRCS' "everything is a branch" work model is really, really
> good. Especially with its (designed, not implemented) delta based
> repository.

Most definitely. In fact, Josh and I have talked about this a bit, and I am planning to use this model unless somebody demonstrates that it is broken.

The differences I see between DCMS and PRCS are as follows:

  1. PRCS configurations use RCS-FILE.RCS-VERSION as unique identifier. Josh has already expressed problems with this to me privately, and it's definitely not a universally unique name. Josh was independently moving in the direction of hash-based names.
  2. PRCS spends a lot of effort on delta management. I'm not going to in the first version. Disk is relatively cheap, and we can add delta handling in the store later. For wire communication, I have in mind to simply use Josh's existing XDELTA work or simply a binary diff. My view here is to first make it correct, then make it compact.
  3. DCMS is distributed from the get go. Josh has a design for this, but when last I spoke to him he didn't expect it to be implemented soon.

Jonathan