Interview with Tom Lord of Arch Revision System

comforteagle writes "Every revision control system has its supporters and detractors, but none is as polar as Arch. Either you hate it or think it is the best thing in revision control ever. Built more around what our beloved kernel hackers use (BK), Arch is definitely a departure from CVS and Subversion. I've interviewed Tom Lord, Arch's daddy, about the application, and he has some -ahem- interesting answers and opinions."

I'm left out...

[Three Headed Man]

"Every revision control system has its supporters and detractors, but none is as polar as Arch. Either you hate it or think it is the best thing in revision control ever."

They forget those of us who have never heard of it before.

Shouldn't headline read

[Anonymous Coward]

Interview with Tom, Lord of Arch Revision System

How to download the source:

[Anonymous Coward]

# cd /usr/src
# export CVSROOT=:pserver:[e-mail]:/usr/cvsr oot
# cvs login - the password is anoncvs.
# cvs checkout arch

Tact?

[keiferb]

This guy should go into politics! His brain-mouth cable has no filter on it. It'd be nice to hear politicians describe their colleagues' bills as "a horrible, horrible design based on a few very good ideas" or "clunky junk".

I'd love to hear his opinion on the vi/emacs debate... that'd get some heads rollin'!

I hate it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Either you hate it or think it is the best thing in revision control ever.

I hate it! God damnit! What was wrong with CVS? (that's a rhetorical question) It was so easy to just cvs co and cvs up.

Then there's some non-intuitive system that everyon and their dog wants to use.

Bah.

Bah I say!

Re:I'm left out...

[themassiah]

Since when has being completely uninformed stopped any Slashdot readers from making informed opinions and spreading them around?

You must be new here.

Re:I'm left out...

[grub]

He's got a much higher UID than you but still... I'll wager 200 Quatloos on the newcomer! duu du DAA DAA DAA DAA DAA daa da daaa....

CVS Clunky?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can he say CVS is clunky junk?

I use it on my 486 SCO Unix machine and think it's the cat's meow.

Re:Shouldn't headline read

[lukewarmfusion]

Should someone be welcoming our new ArchLord?

Argument by Slashdot(r) ?

[legLess]

Tom Lord sounds like he got his argumentation skills by watching Beavis and Butthead, reading JeffK [slashdot.org], and getting into flame wars with trolls on /.

Q: What's wrong with Subversion?
A: It sucks.
Q: What's wrong with CVS?
A: It sucks.
Q: Can you be more specific about Subversion?
A: Yes. Subversion is teh suck. I realize that's a little inflamatory, so let me say that the sky is blue, dogs are hairy, and Subversion is TEH SUCK, fagg0t!!11
Q: Can you be more specific about CVS?
A: Yes, allow me to be more specific. It sux0rs. Hard. CVS is teh sux0r.
Q: What's good about Arch?
A: It rules. Also, I have a large penis. Fagg0t.

It's impossible to take Tom Lord seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

Article summary: every decision made in the development of Subversion is an obvious mistake and a total failure - the result of naive programmers daring to disagree with the "Lord" of revision control.

When given the chance to talk about versioning systems, he spends more time bad-mouthing the competition than
he does promoting his own solution. Did one of the Subversion guys "steal" his girlfriend or something?

Re:No people skills.

[LizardKing]

He certainly comes across as someone suffering from Tourette Syndrome [wikipedia.org]. I've been considering the possibility of being classified as a sufferer myself. That way I can "legitimately" shout obscenities at my boss in planning meetings.

Re:No people skills.

[Anonymous Coward]

You fail to realize that Tom Lord is a genius, and as such has no need for people skills.

Trekkies only

[Anonymous Coward]

Computer, Arch!

Damn.

Hey! Look!

[I Like Pudding]

DJB wrote a revision control system!

Re:No people skills.

[Doctor Fishboy]

He's hampered more by the blind faith of other people in their own way of doing things, and their unwillingness to listen to anything new.

Whatever you say, Tom. *grin*

Dr Fish (who's ALWAYS right)

Re:I'm left out...

[pnot]

because of my public pro-stance on free software... I was on their shitlist and they would not sell me, and therefore the company I currently work for, a license to use Bitkeeper.

Holy hell. That's not so much unprofessional as infantile. Let's hope Linus never pisses Larry McVoy off...

Linus: "Hey, that's a pretty nasty-ass [redmeat.com] shirt you're wearing!"
Larry: "Yeah? Well, in that case I revoke your BitKeeper licence! How d'ya like them apples? [playgroundlaw.com]

Re:I'm left out...

[Anonymous Coward]

What is it with version control and asshats? It's like they're attracted to each other or something. I doubt anyone would deny McVoy is an asshat, and Tom Lord certainly hasn't seen daylight in years do to his choice in rectal headwear. The SVN devlopers can be asshats from time to time. I'm not sure if the CVS authors are asshats, but they're probably dead by now anyway. A ClearCase developer punched a baby once (in his defense, the baby was being kind of a dick).

I rest my case. Version control makes asshats out of people.

Re:It's impossible to take Tom Lord seriously

[mav[LAG]]

Did one of the Subversion guys "steal" his girlfriend or something?

No - he just checked her out :)

Re:darcs

[Anonymous Coward]

(Someone mod parent up--this is really Larry.)

No shit, really? What clued you in? The massive ego or the disregard for open source?