Re: New sync'd branch

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Óscar Fuentes <ofv@wanadoo.es> writes:

> David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> Óscar Fuentes <ofv@wanadoo.es> writes:
>>
>>> Finally, git's UI is horrid: complex, barroque, with plenty of
>>> opportunities for shooting yourself on the feet.
>>
>> But there is the reflog.  After shooting yourself in the foot, you
>> always have the option of going back to before the shot.
>>
>> Yes, it is reasonably easy to blow up some operation terribly if you
>> don't know what you are doing.  Because git has lots of power.  But
>> you always can tell it: "Ok, this was a complete messup.  Give me
>> back what I had 20 minutes ago".
>
> I'll really apreciate a tool that does not make me waste those 20
> minutes.

It saves you hours elsewhere.

>> It is very hard to actually do something which can't be undone.  You
>> have to really try.
>
> And this is different from other VCSs how?

No impact on a central repository even when you tried some complex merge
and got it wrong.  Nobody gets to see your damaged foot.  You just
messed up your personal sandbox temporarily.

>>> Some day people will recognize this and will see today's massive
>>> leaning towards git as a mistake originated on juvenile reverence
>>> towards its original author and on simplistic metrics like raw
>>> speed, putting aside a critical and objetive assessment of its
>>> merits compared against the alternatives.
>>
>> You underestimate git.  And you underestimate "people".  Torvalds
>> usually does several hundreds of merges a day.
>
> The typical Emacs developer is not like Torvads.  Emacs has a
> development style that is very far from Linux's.  Every example about
> how well git works specifically for Torvalds is moot.

That sounds like "nobody will ever need a car, because people ride
horses quite differently than they would ride a car".

>> And that's not just because of "raw speed", but also because of
>> high-quality merging strategies.
>
> git's mergin strategies are possibly superior to bzr, but do we (Emacs
> and most other Free projects) really need them? I think not.

Do we really need cars?  I think not.

I've been the designated merger for diverging feature branches at the
last company I worked with.  Because I was used to working with git.
The VCS at the company was Subversion.  Subversion is quite better with
regard to merging than CVS ever was.  Still I was able to do this stuff
quite more thoroughly and faster with git.  And with "faster" I mean the
investment of human time, not computing time.

>> Moving Emacs towards Bazaar was a real stress test for
>> Bazaar, and still is.
>
> This will be fixed over time.

That's the sort of sentence in software development environments that
sets off all my alarms.

> git's problems (mostly UI and poor support for non-POSIX environments)
> will not be solved anytime soon.

"Stay with our stuff, it is slated to get better.  The stuff that works
better is bad for you" has quite rarely made good on its promises in my
experience.

-- 
David Kastrup