Quilt
Andrew Morton kicked off a little version control tool which is now called Quilt. It doesn't seem to have many web resources at the moment, so I have mirrored the README here. It is in Debian.
Quilt (an assembly of patches, right?) wins in simplicity. Essentially it helps you organize the open-source process of generating patches against somebody else's tree, which you will later presumably mail to them or something similar. Quilt helps you manage the common case of needing to say apply several patches on top of a Linus tree, and then write your own work on top of that.
Leaving the means of archiving, distributing, and reviewing patches out of the scope of the tool is pretty smart.
I *think* Arch is doing something like this on the inside, but it's too hard to understand in the time available.
I don't know this is the direct cause, but it does seem like Larry McVoy has succeeded in taunting free software developers into writing something better than CVS, if not yet clearly better than BitKeeper. There has been a real flowering of interesting new version control systems. Not just different implementations, but genuinely new ways of thinking about the problem, or even of defining what the problem ought to be.
One thing Quilt suggests is that it really may be appropriate to use different tools at different times. The kind of operations you want for sending a single small patch to somebody else's package are quite different to when you're maintaining your own team's tree over many years. It may well be it's better to use different simple tools for each case rather than designing one complex one to do everything.
Reading about some of akpm's other work inspires a mix of nostalgia and awe.
posted Fri 7 Nov 2003 in /software/vc/quilt | link
Archives 2008: Apr Feb 2007: Jul May Feb Jan 2006: Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul Jun Jan 2005: Sep Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan 2004: Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan 2003: Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul Jun May
Copyright (C) 1999-2007 Martin Pool.