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You used CVS and it wasn’t a drugstore.
I didn't feel like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut (or using a VCS optimised for millions of users rather than four files).
CVS does not even support atomic commits across four files.
Technically true, but has that ever been a problem you actually had? I strongly believe that most people won’t ever need most features offered by many contemporary VCSs.
Yes. I used CVS when it was the best option. If I recall, CVS made it easy to check out a different version of only one fail, making it easy to put a system in an inconsistent state.
For modern VCS that’s pleasant to learn and use but won’t scale to the Linux kernel, I recommend Darcs.
A single binary, interactive commands and online help.
Darcs would not solve the problem in question, Portage does not support it either.
Long time since I heard about anyone using CVS. I stopped using it 18 years ago when I discovered how much easier branches were to handle in SVN.
SVN certainly has its charm. However, I don't need branches for a few ebuilds, and I generally tend to use the most efficient tool for a task, not necessarily the most popular one.
Evil person. :D
In my defence: the documentation states I'm allowed to use CVS. :-(
It broke a bash script that's going to be gone within a month. The continuous integration stack in Gentoo (which probably doesn't do quite what you think it does) is basically a stack of bash hacks that causes as many problems as it solves, so it's being retired. ( relevant gentoo-dev ML thread )
I did not know the internals of said stack. The ML thread is amusing though:
I'm even tired that whenever people add new repositories to api.gentoo.org, I have to go through that idiotic GitHub clickety-click UI to stop receiving notifications for everything that happens in these repositories.
I genuinely wonder why the Gentoo dev team even uses Microsoft GitHub for managing its infrastructure. Well, I wonder what will happen after the shutdown.
Github is only used to mirror the main repo (which is on gitweb.gentoo.org). I assume that was done to attract driveby patches and reduce load from Portage git syncs on the Gentoo servers.
Good to know!
this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2025
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