Which version control system or platform is the best one for tracking and distributing personal Emacs configurations?

Question

I currently use subversion to track my configuration changes of Emacs and to sync my '.emacs.d' directory to different platforms.

A lot of packages like Ido, Muse or Org-mode are part of Emacs distributions which come with Debian or Carbon Emacs (osx). But other packages which I'm also using are not part of those distributions so I have to add them to my personal subversion repository manually.

The advantage is that I'm now able to check out my whole '.emacs.d' configuration wherever I want to work. The disadvantage is that I have to track those packages for updates and every time a new update is available I have to update my own repository manually.

Is there is a better way to integrate my own configurations and packages with those of the 'community'? I realized that github.com is used by many people for that reason.

Should I better use git instead of subversion to sync and share my Emacs configurations with that of the community? And does that mean that I should better switch to github.com instead of using my own subversion server to get closer to other Emacs users regarding exchange and distribution?

Answer 1

Every time you have to deal with some "distribution" issue, you could be better off considering a Distributed Version Control System (DVCS).

With Git, for instance, you could organize your packages as submodules within a main emacs configuration project, itself referenced as a submodule within your own project.

That way, you only need to

 git submodule update --recursive

once in a while to be sure getting the latest packages referenced by your central configuration project.
Note: the recursive initialization of those submodules is a bit tricky: see this SO question for more.