Re: Prefer Mercurial instead of git

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <jordigh@octave.org> writes:

> On Sat, 2014-01-04 at 11:11 +0100, David Kastrup wrote:
>> Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <jordigh@octave.org> writes:
>> 
>> > My main argument in favour of hg is not technical, but rather social.
>> > For GNU, I think it is far more important to support a project that
>> > aligns with GNU's aims,
>> 
>> Emacs shot itself in this foot with Bzr already.
>
> That wasn't the problem with bzr. The problems with bzr are technical,
> not social. Its *algorithms* were unsalvageable.

Sorry, that's just nonsense.  Algorithms can always be replaced by
better ones.  Database formats can be migrated.  It is not a technical
problem that Bazaar was essentially swallowed and privatized by
Canonical.  Its technical problems affected its user base and had an
influence on it not surpassing the critical mass for getting a vibrant
community behind it that would have rendered Canonical's power grab (and
subsequent retirement) teethless.

At any rate, I don't think we are likely to get better advice than from
Stephen Turnbull.  He is the XEmacs maintainer, and XEmacs has now used
Mercurial as its version control system for several years.

If his experience makes him lean towards Git (with which he is also
quite familiar it would seem), I consider this much more relevant than
the recommendations of insider fans of a tool.  An insider fan is nice
to have because it's usually easy to embarrass him or her into doing a
lot of work making his tool actually better fit the job.  But at one
point of time, they tire, and then the product and the underlying steady
community are more important.

And that's the sort of settled situation that XEmacs is in regarding its
use of Mercurial.  If it's Stephen's view that a second time they would
probably not do that again given the state and development of Git, and
that's more or less how I understood his comments, then that's quite
strong medicine.

There seems to be no point in ignoring extremely pertinent experience.

-- 
David Kastrup