Re: Prefer Mercurial instead of git

["Óscar Fuentes" <ofv@wanadoo.es>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> Choosing git was, simply, the result of a popularity contest.
>
> Maybe we have read two different discussions in two different forums.
> My reading of it was that the popularity was explained by power and
> flexibility that are unmatched by competition.

That, naturally, is the opinion of git proponents.

Certainly, neither RMS nor Stefan are giving the OK to the switch
because they agree with them.

>> What I dispute is your implicit claim of "git is complex,
>> not-so-well documented and has a not-so-good UI, hence learning it
>> will be hard."
>
> Did I say that?

I think that that is precisely the message a bystander could get.

> I only responded to your assertion that the UI is a
> red herring, that's all.
>
>> For Eli's definition of "learning", the claim may be true. For
>> somebody else's definition of "learning", it is not. Not everyone is
>> interested on a thorough study of the tool "just in case" when some
>> simple instructions are enough to incorporate their edits into
>> Emacs' repository.
>
> I wonder how many of git enthusiasts think that way.  My impression
> was that most, if not all of them think like me: that git is worthy of
> being mastered.

Whatever git enthusiasts think about the worthiness of thoroughly
learning git is irrelevant for the transition. The important point is:
"how hard it will be for Emacs hackers that don't know git to keep
contributing?."

>> For those cases, a web search will quickly provide the solution. One
>> advantage of belonging to a huge user base is that somebody, somewhere,
>> had your same problem on the past, and helpful experts abound.
>
> Do you act this way with Emacs, too?

Yes, mostly, although Emacs is not the same case. Emacs is an aggregate
of packages, while Git is largely monolithic. Most Emacs packages have a
very small user base.

There exists no Emacs experts on the same sense that there are Git or
C++ experts (i.e. somebody who quickly can provide an authoritative
answer to almost any question pertaining the subject matter.)