ikiwiki/ Revision Control Systems

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

Ikiwiki started out supporting only Subversion, 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. 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.

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 | yes | yes | no | yes
`rcs_rename` | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | no | yes
`rcs_remove` | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | no | yes
`rcs_diff` | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes
`rcs_getctime` | fast | slow | slow | slow | fast | slow | slow | slow
`rcs_getmtime` | fast | slow | slow | slow | fast | no | no | no
`rcs_preprevert` | yes | no | no | no | no | no | no | no
`rcs_revert` | yes | no | no | 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 | yes | yes | 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 or 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.