https://www.bennee.com/~alex/2009-06-09T10:17:00+01:00the wanderings of a supposed digital native2009-06-09T10:17:00+01:002009-06-09T10:17:00+01:00alextag:www.bennee.com,2009-06-09:/~alex/blog/2009/06/09/distributed-vcs/

<p>I've mentioned distributed version control systems a few times. It was interesting note the advice that <a class="reference external" href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=5828">Savannah is giving</a> about recovering from a recent disk crash. Both Git andMercurial based projects can restore from local repositories as they contain all the revision history within them. The centralised version control systems …</p>

<p>I've mentioned distributed version control systems a few times. It was interesting note the advice that <a class="reference external" href="http://savannah.nongnu.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=5828">Savannah is giving</a> about recovering from a recent disk crash. Both Git andMercurial based projects can restore from local repositories as they contain all the revision history within them. The centralised version control systems are relying explicit backups being made. History has proved that getting <a class="reference external" href="http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/15/0138204">backups done right</a> is harder <a class="reference external" href="http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Gentoo_Linux_Wiki:Backups">than it looks</a>. If your running an open source project there is a lot to be said for having ever developer mirror you code for you. To slightly misquote Linus*: <em>&quot;Only wimps use backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff and let the rest of the world mirror it&quot;</em>.</p> <p>* The <a class="reference external" href="http://groups.google.com/group/linux.dev.kernel/msg/76ae734d543e396d?pli=1">original quote</a> mentions tape and ftp which dates it a bit.</p>