converting between revision control systems (was Re: [arch-users] tag docs)

[Tom Lord]

       I for one have no desires to convert from RCS to CVS to SVN to
       Arch.


Putting aside the question of converting via SVN ... I'm starting to
feel a little dubious about the value of bulk auto-converting from
_any_ revision control system to _any_ other (unless the source and
target have perfectly isomorphic models, or the target model has a
subset which is perfectly isomorphic to the source).

If the target system is not a strict superset of the source system,
then any such conversion will alter history -- it's going to throw out
information or, at least, create a need for new tools that can recover
that information from the altered format.

I can imagine wanting, for convenience purposes, to go back and store
historic releases or milestones in a new arch deployment -- but I
think in a lot of situations, you'd also want to just freeze your CVS
repository, keep it around for a long time, and start a fresh arch
repository for work going forward.

What's the goal of a bulk auto-conversion of historic data, anyway?  
Just so you can `rm -f /usr/local/bin/cvs'?

-t