Do version control repositories need to support search? [closed]

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Is it important to be able to search your version control repository, or is it good enough to be able to search your local sources? If it is important to be able to search the repository, why is it important?

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I'd say it definitely is a useful feature to be able to find things in previous revisions - there is a million reasons why one could need that.

The same goes for files that existed in previous revisions but don't any more in the current revision.

And sometimes it may be important to track down since when (which revision) a variable or configuration setting exists.

That said, I personally have never been in a situation when I have really urgently needed this. Still, I'd say any self-respecting VCS should have a search function, or an external tool available that does the job. As far as I know, this is the case for at least Subversion, Git and Mercurial.

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usually you hardly search the repository. you usually search on the latest version on your hard disk.

If you need to do a lot of historical digging, or if you have a lot of projects that you don't check out - than search abilities are important on the VC repository, but this is not the regular case that I've seen.

It really depends on your repository size, and how much you need historical info. (I always check out everything, so I'll have another backup... so I never uses the server for searches)

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The company I work for thinks it is important due to the sheer number of repository servers and projects that we have created.