Version Management Tools: CVS to BK in the Linux Kernel

Open source projects, if successful, grow large quite rapidly. Under such conditions it may become necessary for developers to employ some version management tool. Thus, in the case of the Linux kernel, before version tools were introduced Linus Torvalds would make pre-patches and/or releases and coordination was achieved through individuals acting as maintainers. If maintainers were able to keep up with the patches, and not lose or confuse the various patches, then a version management system would not be needed. However, while this may be possible for a small band of developers working on a small application, it would not seem to be so for a project the size of the Linux kernel. [via]

http://pascal.case.unibz.it/retrieve/2770/sha...