

GitHub announces subversion support - kneath
http://github.com/blog/626-announcing-svn-support

======
pjhyett
This is absolutely not a joke, but we couldn't miss the opportunity to have a
little fun with the announcement.

~~~
mnemonicsloth
Didn't you guys do this as an actual April Fools joke the year you launched?

~~~
pjhyett
We didn't anticipate hiring someone as dangerously insane as Scott Chacon
willing to actually build this for us :)

To answer the other question below, we will be rolling out write support in
the future. The idea that millions of SVN users can start using GitHub with
zero effort is a really big deal for us.

~~~
jrockway
How do SVN clients deal with "git push --force"?

------
rabidgnat
Backwards-compatibility efforts like these are great. Some CVS/SVN users are
(un?)surprisingly stubborn about trying new things, and they can halt upgrade
efforts with their complaints. My company is converting our repositories from
CVS to git as we speak, and the number within our ranks who prefer CVS is
surprising. Without support for older programs like CVS, we wouldn't have the
momentum to upgrade

Kudos to Github for providing one less excuse to holdouts!

~~~
umjames
I'd like to know how that transition is going for you. Are you having the
expected difficulty of explaining a DVCS workflow? Any difficulties converting
CVS modules to git repositories?

At work, I'm stuck on CVS. I'd love to use git, but the people I work with
don't really know how to use any version control system properly. My commits
are the only ones with commit messages. They don't use tags and haven't heard
of branches.

I mentioned git to my boss, but he was hesitant because he couldn't get it
running on his Windows 7 box at home (we don't use Windows 7 at work, mostly
WinXP). I did a quick Google search and found that the problem is with a
changed DLL in Windows 7, and that putting the old version of that DLL in
git's bin directory should work, but I don't think my boss tried that.

~~~
rabidgnat
It's going pretty well, but we're cheating: we give the other devs both the
CVS and the git checkout commands, and let them use what they want. The early
adopters tend to be those who already use it outside of work.

I agree that the tools on Windows aren't stable: I've had to help debug at
least 3 or 4 git installs of TortoiseGit-esque tools. I personally just use it
from the command line.

Moving forward, we'll train people to use git when they go offsite with other
developers, or if they're curious. Part of our job involves spending days away
from an Internet connection, so they'll suddenly be sink-or-swim and probably
never turn back :)

------
tommorris
I thought they already did this a few years ago -
<http://github.com/blog/31-back-to-subversion> ;)

Oh, but this time it actually works!

------
vinhboy
You know, once you are logged into Github, you can never see the Github
homepage ever again :(

~~~
mojombo
You can, you just have to know the URL: <http://github.com/home>

------
stretchwithme
it will now just be known as "Hub"

------
leh
If this is a joke, it's a damn good one. Otherwise, it's a cool feature :-)

~~~
kneath
No joke, try it out. `svn co <http://svn.github.com/jquery/jquery`>

~~~
sunkencity
It works from the command line, but not from the browser "headers incomplete".

However it's pretty annoying that there's no access control through svn. I
just checked out my private repo without entering any credentials :(

~~~
foca
There is, try checking out someone else's private repo. You can't :)

(For example, defunkt/github)

~~~
sunkencity
;)

------
soe
april fool!

~~~
joshfinnie
It seems that this is no joke. Which brings me to an interesting question: why
would you release anything true on April 1st?

It just lends itself to be second guessed and it could miss a critical uptake
period of the first day of release...

~~~
india
Not if your product has a too good to be true factor. For instance, the gmail
release worked out really beautifully.

~~~
erlanger
While surprising, I think GitHub's announcement today fails to meet that
criteria.

