I'm new to Mercurial. I'm used to use subversion. There was a habit of using trunk as the main folder for an project.
When I create a new repository in Mercurial, should I name the default branch as Trunk ?
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74answers:
3
+6
A:
Using copied directories for tags and branches are a serious design flaw in SVN, regardless what the manuals say. It introduces many problems, of which the most serious one is the fact that the whole tagging vs. branching model relies only on convention, but there is really nothing preventing anyone from branching in the "wrong" directory.
The second big flaw with the approach is that it encourages giant project structures, since people want to keep their single {trunk,tags,branches} at top level. Now one can happily go and copy (~branch) of only one sub-directory or even file, which also creates a potential big mess.
So don't get too tied up with the SVN way to do things, but instead learn and embrace the "right" way to do things, as in Hg or Git. Forget about trunks and branches directories, and set up your project structure in some sane way.
Kai Inkinen
2010-07-22 19:58:07
Wish I could do +10 on this answer. Using directories as metadata is flawed and just *wrong*.
Paul Nathan
2010-07-22 20:08:48
And how does the sane way look like ? :-)
2010-07-22 20:47:19
Basically anything that works for your project or software. I personally do java with maven, and we use the maven default structure. The point is, one shouldn't have to worry whether creating a directory named tags somewhere will cause confusion. That's what SVN does. And to add to my comments above. The biggest flaw with SVN is really that it's taught half a generation of coders to think trunk and branches folders are actually the correct way to do things.
Kai Inkinen
2010-07-24 14:50:36