Re: What a modern collaboration toolkit looks like

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org>
> Date: Tue, 01 Jan 2008 12:28:43 +0100
> 
> The current way with posting patches on emacs-devel, getting review,
> rewriting the patches, yet more review and eventually being included
> (but still with no write access) can make the work much harder.
> [...]
> I could say, hey, I've developed this new foo-mode, please look at my
> git repository at http://www.tsdh.de/repos/git/foo, get the review,
> change it till everybody is satisfied and eventually one of the core
> devs could pull the changes.

Please explain how the former is harder than the latter.  You still
need to wait for review and approval.  OTOH, having a patch pushed
into my INBOX and staring in my face runs better chances that I will
review it than if I need to be on-line and type some commands first
just to see it.

> There's a nice video at youtube where Linus Torvalds talks about git
> where he discribes the benefits of distributed VCSs (in a very
> entertaining way).

Linus and others invented git because Linux kernel development is
radically different from Emacs development.  To start using git, we
need first get to the point the Linux kernel developers are at: lots
of developers independently developing all kinds of extensions.  _And_
we need a head maintainer who works on nothing else but integration of
features she likes into the product that is eventually released.

Please also don't forget that, unlike a Linux kernel, Emacs must have
good user-level documentation.  So decentralized development needs
also solve the problem of producing high quality manuals.

> IMO this would change with a VCS like git, too.  On problem with the
> current situation is that possible contributors might fear that their
> changes break something or won't be liked by the core devs.  So they
> don't even try it at all.

I don't see why.  Someone who wants just to try things can do that in
their sandbox; no one will ever know they did it unless they tell or
post the patches.  How is this different from using git?

> So to sum up: There are quite a few young devs that write good elisp
> code

Do you have numbers? or is "few" == 1 here?