Torvalds codes temporary replacement for Bitkeeper

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

In the wake of Bitmover CEO Larry McVoy's decision to end the free distribution of the Linux version of the source code management system Bitkeeper, Linux founder Linus Torvalds has written a program called "git" to access the Linux source code repositories, Torvalds wrote in a post to the Linux kernel mailing list. The program, resting at version 0.04 as of April 13, is, according to Torvalds's README file: "a stupid (but extremely fast) directory content manager. It doesn't do a whole lot, but what it _does_ do is track directory contents efficiently."

When Bitmover changed its licensing scheme, Torvalds wrote that he was looking into using Monotone; he added that he did not want to use Subversion (SVN). According to Kerneltrap.org, on April 7, Torvalds noted, "I detest the centralized SCM model, but if push comes to shove, and we just _can't_ get a reasonable parallell^[sic] merge thing going in the short timeframe (ie month or two), I'll use something like SVN on a trusted site with just a few committers . . ."

While Torvalds characterized Monotone as slow, he was hopeful that it could be sped up. He anticipated using the pre-Bitkeeper system of "people email patches to Linus" until the 2.6.12 kernel is released in the next month or so.

Sources

Linus Torvalds. "Re: Kernel SCM saga.." — Linux kernel mailing list, April 8, 2005

Linus Torvalds. "Index of /pub/linux/kernel/people/torvalds" — kernel.org,

Jeremy Andrews. "Linux: Managing the Kernel Source With 'git'" — kerneltrap.org, April 11, 2005

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

Share this: