ikiwiki/doc/rcs.mdwn

[[!meta title="Revision Control Systems"]]

Ikiwiki supports using several revision control systems for storing page
histories. 

Ikiwiki started out supporting only [[Subversion|svn]], but the interface
ikiwiki uses to a revision control system is sufficiently simple and
generic that it can be adapted to work with many systems by writing a
[[plugin|plugins/write]]. These days, most people use [[git]].

While all supported revision control systems work well enough for basic
use, some advanced or special features are not supported in all of them.
The table below summarises this for each revision control system and
links to more information about each.

[[!table data="""
feature             |[[git]]|[[svn]]|[[bzr]]   |[[monotone]]|[[mercurial]]|[[darcs]]|[[tla]]   |[[cvs]]
[[ikiwiki-makerepo]]|yes    |yes    |yes       |yes         |yes          |yes      |no        |yes
auto.setup          |yes    |yes    |incomplete|yes         |incomplete   |yes      |incomplete|yes
`rcs_commit_staged` |yes    |yes    |yes       |yes         |no           |yes      |no        |yes
`rcs_rename`        |yes    |yes    |yes       |yes         |no           |yes      |no        |yes
`rcs_remove`        |yes    |yes    |yes       |yes         |no           |yes      |no        |yes
`rcs_diff`          |yes    |yes    |yes       |yes         |no           |yes      |yes       |yes
`rcs_getctime`      |fast   |slow   |slow      |slow        |slow         |slow     |slow      |slow
`rcs_getmtime`      |fast   |slow   |slow      |no          |no           |no       |no        |no
anonymous push      |yes    |no     |no        |no          |no           |no       |no        |no
conflict handling   |yes    |yes    |yes       |buggy       |yes          |yes      |yes       |yes
openid username     |yes    |no     |no        |no          |no           |no       |no        |no
"""]]

Notes:

* Lack of support in [[ikiwiki-makerepo]] or auto.setup can make it harder to
  set up a wiki using that revision control system.
* The `rcs_commit_staged` hook is needed to use [[attachments|plugins/attachment]]
  or [[plugins/comments]].
* `rcs_getctime` and `rcs_getmtime` may be implemented in a fast way (ie, one log
  lookup for all files), or very slowly (one lookup per file).
* Openid username support allows avoiding display of Google's ugly openids.

There is a page with [[details]] about how the different systems work with
ikiwiki, for the curious.