SAPO Codebits 2009

Session Title

Why you should be using a distributed version control system (DVCS) for your project

Abstract

There has been a lot of buzz about distributed version control system recently. Many OSS projects have heated discussions about which of the available tools they should switch to, conversions of popular projects are being publicly scrutinized and commented on. Sometimes, these discourses remind one of the "vi vs. emacs" flame wars of the past.

But for many users and developers the benefits are not entirely clear yet. What's wrong with the centralized approach?

This talk will give an introduction into distributed version control, its
benefits, how it differs from centralized systems like Subversion/CVS and what role a DVCS plays in empowering your developers and community.

In addition to covering some of the general social and technical aspects, Lenz will also give an overview to the most popular tools in this space, comparing Bazaar, git and Mercurial with each other and highlighting the most notable differences.

Language

English

Speakers

Lenz Grimmer

Lenz is a member of the MySQL Community Relations Team at Sun Microsystems. He lives in Hamburg, Germany and has worked for MySQL since April, 2002. Before joining the Community Relations team in December 2005, he was a member of the Release Engineering team that is in charge of creating the official release builds of the MySQL server. Prior to working for MySQL, Lenz was an engineer in the distribution development team of SuSE Linux in Nuremberg for four years. His first work experiences with LAMP environments date back to 1995, when he took his first job as a systems administrator and web developer for a small web company. He has a degree in Computer Science and has been involved in Linux and Open Source since 1994. In his spare time, Lenz enjoys hacking on open source software (e.g. maintaining his mylvmbackup tool or building RPM packages on the openSUSE Build Service), playing with his daughter Lena and spending time in the garden. (more)