Okay, first things first. I know some people are waiting for e-mail from me. I'll catch up ASAP. So no, I've not forgotten about you :)

The upgrade to OpenBSD 3.7 was pretty smooth and was the reason for last weekend's outage, in case you were wondering. Well, it's OpenBSD so little, if any, surprises are expected. Some of the new functionality is pretty nice, and so is the use of gcc 3.x instead of the aging 2.95 series. I pgdump'ed all the database information before the update just in case but, in the end, it wasn't needed, and quite soon I had the server back on track, modulo a minor problem with postfix, which required some tweaking in the config files for the transition from the 2.0 series to 2.2 to work correctly. Another reason why I was looking forward to upgrading to 3.7 is that SVN is now in the ports collection. I really wanted to give svn another try, and this time I can say that it's gotten good enough to replace p4. The first step was converting the p4 repo to svn. I tried using the dest::svk option in VCP but it segfaulted, so I converted the repo to CVS and then used the cvs2svn conversion tool. Worked like a charm. In case you're interested, this is what did it for me...


#!/bin/sh
for module in `p4 have | awk -F/ '{print $4}'|sort -u`
do vcp "p4:(scienide)@perforce:1666://depot/"$module"/..." "cvs:/pub/devel/cvs:"$module
done
cd /pub/devel/cvs && find . -name CVSROOT -exec rm -rf {} \;
cvs2svn --dump-only --dumpfile=/pub/tmp/cvsdump /pub/devel/cvs
ssh mindfields svnadmin load /storage3/devel/svn < /pub/tmp/cvsdump
svn checkout svn+ssh://mindfields.energyhq.es.eu.org/storage3/devel/svn/trunk svn


Pretty straightforward, right? So, things I like in svn and I things I like in p4:

• P4 enforces permissions on files, so a quick ls will tell me what file(s) I'm currently working on.
• svn version numbers are repository wide, which has an interesting side effect. Let's see an example:


flynn@scienide% svn --verbose log -r 216
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r216 | flynn | 2005-05-30 13:07:08 +0200 (Mon, 30 May 2005) | 1 line
Changed paths:
M /trunk/gtk-send-pr/gtk-send-pr.h
M /trunk/gtk-send-pr/gtk_ui.c
M /trunk/gtk-send-pr/main.c


Use a linked list for files
------------------------------------------------------------------------
flynn@scienide% grep Id gtk-send-pr.h gtk_ui.c main.c
gtk-send-pr.h: $Id: gtk-send-pr.h 216 2005-05-30 11:07:08Z flynn $
gtk_ui.c: $Id: gtk_ui.c 216 2005-05-30 11:07:08Z flynn $
main.c: $Id: main.c 216 2005-05-30 11:07:08Z flynn $


Note how those 3 files have the same revision and how svn log tells me what I did in change 216 and which files it affected.

My main concern about svn was its speed, or the lack of. This seems to have been addressed in the recent releases and, coupled with the FSFS backend, makes a formidable SCM. So what I'm doing now is keep developing on the p4 repo and then copy and commit those same changes to the svn one. Once I feel confident enough with svn newer development will take place on the svn repo. I have to figure out a way to run a chrooted svnweb system, although Trac looks even more interesting (thanks wac for pointing it out), and probably worth giving a go.

And now, let's talk a bit about Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith. I know a lot has been said about it, so if you've had enough already you might skip the rest of the entry. I'll try not to spoil the movie for those who have not seen it yet. And on that topic, if you plan to watch it later when it comes out on DVD, this is a definitely movie worth watching on the big screen, even if you're not that big a Star Wars fan. After having read some posts on /. and IMDB I get the impression that some people think Star Wars is sci-fi. I don't think that's the case, at all. In my opinion, Star Wars is just fantasy set on space.

2001: A Space Odyssey is sci-fi, Star Wars is not. Another thing I find funny is how some people bash the movie's cheesy love scenes and acting, somehow forgetting that the acting in IV, V and VI wasn't that great either. I've recently watched the old trilogy and, while Alec Guiness' work was pretty good, I wouldn't say Mark Hamill's performance was Oscar material. Not that it matters! Because Star Wars was never about that. Star Wars is about (back then) cutting edge effects, battle scenes and a very interesting story. I found The Phantom Menace to be way worse than the old trilogy, and Attack of the Clones to be almost on par and, to be honest, my expectations for Revenge of the Sith were pretty high, and I'm glad to say that George Lucas has met my expectations.

ILM have reached perfection. I've been follwing their work since Young Sherlock Holmes and, milestone after milestone, these people have set the gold standard of what can be achieved with CGI. In EP3 the rendering is perfect, plain and simple. No flaws, no bad textures or lights, no easily spotted fake-looking characters. The attention paid to detail is incredible. My only complain is that the floors on the Jedi Temple look like they were made of plastic, but that's it. Water, fire, clouds, stone, metal. You name it, the ILM people have perfected it. What can be said about the score. Simply amazing. Very very moving music, like always. Some songs really got stuck in my head. Excellent soundtrack. As for the rest, yes the love scenes are cheesy (it's a Lucas film) and the dialogue is not so good but, as I've said before, who cares? The battle scenes are grandiose, and so are the lightsaber duels. And Vader's transformation, wow. There are a lot of references to the other movies, but I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader.

I realize how easy it is to get passionate about Star Wars. This movie gives you a completely different perspective of Darth Vader, Palpatine and the Jedi Order. I felt so bad for Anakin, what he went through and what his motives were. You can never watch the classic trilogy with the same eyes again after EP3. Vader had been the epitome of evil for so long, and now I feel sorry for him. He's just a poor kid who tried to save the ones he loved and was deceived and manipulated by that Emperor guy. The way the Jedi handled the issue, specially Obi-Wan, was a bit disappointing. I'd venture to say that they were as guilty as others of the fall of the republic. I've read just the first chapter of the novel and it goes into much more detail (not surprising) and makes a very nice read after having watched the movie. Of course, these words are coming from a Star Wars fan, so my comments are pretty biased. If you know what to expect EP3 is, in yours truly opinion, on par with The Empire Strikes Back, my personal favourite. Both are dark, sad and very moving films.

On a different note, did Hollywood run out of ideas once more? We saw trailers for remakes of The Pink Panther (with Beyoncé Knowles, WTF?), The War of the Worlds and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. I wonder when they'll star making remakes of remakes :)

Oh, and for those of you looking forward to watching a sci-fi movie, I've been suggested Serenity. The trailer surely looks promising. We'll see. And now, back to answering e-mail :)