How are DVCS used in large teams?

Question

I\'ve recently started getting into Git on a personal project, and I can see how a DVCS might benefit us at work (which is a large enterprise software company, currently running

Answer 1

I've been working for several years with the Glasgow Haskell Compiler team using Darcs. I've recently (several months) started using git for my own copy of the repo, both for performance and to improve my education.

1. How do you deal with N-way merges?

   There are no N-way merges. Each developer originates a stream of patches, and streams are merged one at a time at each repo. So if N developers make changes simultaneously, they get merged pairwise.

2. Do you use a single central authoritative repository?

   Absolutely. It's the only way to tell what's GHC and what isn't.

3. Do developers often push and pull code to and from each other, or does everything go via the central repository?

   I think it depends on the developers and the VCS you are using. On the GHC project almost all the pulls and pushes I see go through the central repository. But there's a heavyweight (self-administered) gatekeeper on pushes to the central repo, and if a colleague has a bug fix I need now, I'll pull it direct from his or her repo. With darcs it is very easy to pull just a single patch (rather than the whole state as in git), and I know that my fellow deveopers, who have more experience with darcs, use this feature a lot more than I do---and they like it a lot.

   With git, when I am working closely with one other developer, I will frequently create a new branch just for the purpose of sharing it with one other person. That branch will never hit the central repo.