* Manual policy (Re: Emacs-devel Digest, Vol 44, Issue 65) [not found] <20071010211743.5104873931@grelber.thyrsus.com> @ 2007-10-10 21:44 ` Eric S. Raymond 2007-10-10 22:00 ` Manoj Srivastava ` (2 more replies) 0 siblings, 3 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Eric S. Raymond @ 2007-10-10 21:44 UTC (permalink / raw) To: emacs-devel From: Jason Rumney <jasonr@gnu.org> > Subject: Re: Policy issue in the VC manual -- recommending CVS?!? > To: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@snark.thyrsus.com> > Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org > Message-ID: <470D40AA.6020400@gnu.org> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > Eric S. Raymond wrote: > > Recommending GNU arch is dubious considering Arch's poorly-maintained > > and poorly-documented state. If I'm not mistaken, Arch has been > > effectively moribund since about 2003. > > > > I think you're mistaken. Savannah lists the last release as July last year. So it's only been over a year since the last point release. I'm not hugely reassured. > > Recommending CVS is well beyond dubious into outright ridiculous. > > Like it or not, CVS is stable, and widely used. Its "problems" are > widely exaggerated by adherents to the latest wave of version control > religions. Er. I've been using VCSes since the days when SCCS was the only one in existence. The fact that I still cheerfully use RCS, the second one ever built, makes me pretty bulletproof against charges of version-control faddism. But file-oriented VCSes just plain suck for distributed projects, and there's no way to make them not suck. > > No recommendations at all would be better than these. Who decides > > what the manual recommends? If it's "the last person to care", I'm > > going to nuke these in a nanosecond. > Arch is part of GNU Please tell me you're not implying that we should recommend an inferior GPLed tool over a superior one just because the inferior is distributed from an FSF server. That would be taking political jaundice to an absurd extreme. -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: Manual policy (Re: Emacs-devel Digest, Vol 44, Issue 65) 2007-10-10 21:44 ` Manual policy (Re: Emacs-devel Digest, Vol 44, Issue 65) Eric S. Raymond @ 2007-10-10 22:00 ` Manoj Srivastava 2007-10-10 22:07 ` Jason Rumney 2007-10-11 14:46 ` Stefan Monnier 2 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Manoj Srivastava @ 2007-10-10 22:00 UTC (permalink / raw) To: emacs-devel On Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:44:19 -0400, Eric S Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> said: > From: Jason Rumney <jasonr@gnu.org> >> Subject: Re: Policy issue in the VC manual -- recommending CVS?!? >> To: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@snark.thyrsus.com> >> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org >> Message-ID: <470D40AA.6020400@gnu.org> Content-Type: text/plain; >> charset=ISO-8859-1 >> >> Eric S. Raymond wrote: >> > Recommending GNU arch is dubious considering Arch's >> > poorly-maintained and poorly-documented state. If I'm not >> > mistaken, Arch has been effectively moribund since about 2003. >> > >> >> I think you're mistaken. Savannah lists the last release as July last >> year. > So it's only been over a year since the last point release. I'm not > hugely reassured. I can assure you that the tool is functional, and is in production use in a number of projects. >> > Recommending CVS is well beyond dubious into outright ridiculous. >> >> Like it or not, CVS is stable, and widely used. Its "problems" are >> widely exaggerated by adherents to the latest wave of version control >> religions. > Er. I've been using VCSes since the days when SCCS was the only one > in existence. The fact that I still cheerfully use RCS, the second > one ever built, makes me pretty bulletproof against charges of > version-control faddism. But file-oriented VCSes just plain suck for > distributed projects, and there's no way to make them not suck. >> > No recommendations at all would be better than these. Who decides >> > what the manual recommends? If it's "the last person to care", I'm >> > going to nuke these in a nanosecond. >> Arch is part of GNU > Please tell me you're not implying that we should recommend an > inferior GPLed tool over a superior one just because the inferior is > distributed from an FSF server. That would be taking political > jaundice to an absurd extreme. I think you first have to make your case that arch is inferior. It does not change a whole lot, but what we have works just fine. Over the last year I have twice evaluate bzr and git, and found that they do not support the feature set of arch that I have come to rely upon -- so in my view, at least, bzr and git are the inferior products. YMMV. manoj -- God isn't dead, he just couldn't find a parking place. Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@acm.org> <http://www.golden-gryphon.com/> 1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: Manual policy (Re: Emacs-devel Digest, Vol 44, Issue 65) 2007-10-10 21:44 ` Manual policy (Re: Emacs-devel Digest, Vol 44, Issue 65) Eric S. Raymond 2007-10-10 22:00 ` Manoj Srivastava @ 2007-10-10 22:07 ` Jason Rumney 2007-10-10 22:55 ` Eric S. Raymond 2007-10-11 14:46 ` Stefan Monnier 2 siblings, 1 reply; 8+ messages in thread From: Jason Rumney @ 2007-10-10 22:07 UTC (permalink / raw) To: esr; +Cc: emacs-devel Eric S. Raymond wrote: > So it's only been over a year since the last point release. I'm not > hugely reassured. > I'm not sure why stability is seen as such a bad thing these days, especially for a revision control tool. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: Manual policy (Re: Emacs-devel Digest, Vol 44, Issue 65) 2007-10-10 22:07 ` Jason Rumney @ 2007-10-10 22:55 ` Eric S. Raymond 2007-10-12 18:09 ` Stephen J. Turnbull 0 siblings, 1 reply; 8+ messages in thread From: Eric S. Raymond @ 2007-10-10 22:55 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Jason Rumney; +Cc: emacs-devel Jason Rumney <jasonr@gnu.org>: > Eric S. Raymond wrote: > > So it's only been over a year since the last point release. I'm not > > hugely reassured. > > I'm not sure why stability is seen as such a bad thing these days, > especially for a revision control tool. Stability is good. Signs of life and responsiveness from the dev team are, however, just as important. I want to have reasonable confidence that someone is alive to deal with bug reports. -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: Manual policy (Re: Emacs-devel Digest, Vol 44, Issue 65) 2007-10-10 22:55 ` Eric S. Raymond @ 2007-10-12 18:09 ` Stephen J. Turnbull 0 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Stephen J. Turnbull @ 2007-10-12 18:09 UTC (permalink / raw) To: esr; +Cc: emacs-devel, Jason Rumney Eric S. Raymond writes: > Stability is good. Signs of life and responsiveness from the dev team > are, however, just as important. I want to have reasonable confidence > that someone is alive to deal with bug reports. It's not bug reports that are the issue in a recommendation like this one; it's usability. Arch is stable, and works well as designed. The issue I think is important is that Arch pioneered the "porcelain vs. plumbing" distinction that git has so felicitously described; Arch proper is plumbing, unlike what you (incorrectly) class as "more modern" derivatives like bazaar and bzr. They're not "more modern", they're simply integrated and to some extent simplified (Tom would say "dumbed-down") porcelains. (Plumbing may be optimized, as well, which is a huge issue with darcs and something of an issue with Arch.) Arch has proved itself quite amenable to Emacs-based porcelains like xetla, while still providing the raw power of Arch itself. (Although I haven't experienced Arch as more powerful than git; I'm curious what use cases Manoj has in mind that Arch handles well while git does not.) Nonetheless, I would not recommend Arch as a distributed VC to a project looking for a VC unless the developers are experienced with and like Arch (in which case a recommendation in vc.texi is gratuitous, at least at *the* time of writing ;-). As you probably perceive, I consider the porcelain/plumbing distinction as elegant and useful, but all active VC product communities that I know well enough to consider for my own projects (bzr, hg, git, darcs) are very firmly in the "porcelain-attached" camp. I suppose that there's a reason for that; my guess is that it gives a much smoother startup, and a confused early history can cause a lot of pain later. I don't have time to review the texi in detail, but I would suggest recommending Subversion for traditional centralized organization and as a robust vehicle for timely delivery of sanctioned versioned source code, the foursome above (possibly adding Monotone about which I know nothing) for general distributed use, and mentioning the existence of GNU Arch (which after all is a GNU project and does have some special features, not to mention substantial historic interest). Then point to one or more of the excellent comparison pages out on the web, or to Wikipedia which though of uneven quality is likely to be updated reasonably often. HTH ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: Manual policy (Re: Emacs-devel Digest, Vol 44, Issue 65) 2007-10-10 21:44 ` Manual policy (Re: Emacs-devel Digest, Vol 44, Issue 65) Eric S. Raymond 2007-10-10 22:00 ` Manoj Srivastava 2007-10-10 22:07 ` Jason Rumney @ 2007-10-11 14:46 ` Stefan Monnier 2007-10-11 15:03 ` Eric S. Raymond 2 siblings, 1 reply; 8+ messages in thread From: Stefan Monnier @ 2007-10-11 14:46 UTC (permalink / raw) To: esr; +Cc: emacs-devel >> > Recommending GNU arch is dubious considering Arch's poorly-maintained >> > and poorly-documented state. If I'm not mistaken, Arch has been >> > effectively moribund since about 2003. Let's see what we currently support: (RCS CVS SVN SCCS Bzr Git Hg Mtn Arch MCVS) [with DaRCS being hopefully added soon] Of those, when starting a new project, I wouldn't want to recommend any one in particular: they all have their strength and weaknesses. I don't think it's our role to pimp one over another. And given the fact that Emacs provides no particular support to start a project under either of those VCS anyway, I think we should simply punt on this issue. Stefan ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: Manual policy (Re: Emacs-devel Digest, Vol 44, Issue 65) 2007-10-11 14:46 ` Stefan Monnier @ 2007-10-11 15:03 ` Eric S. Raymond 2007-10-11 15:05 ` David Kastrup 0 siblings, 1 reply; 8+ messages in thread From: Eric S. Raymond @ 2007-10-11 15:03 UTC (permalink / raw) To: Stefan Monnier; +Cc: emacs-devel Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>: > Let's see what we currently support: > > (RCS CVS SVN SCCS Bzr Git Hg Mtn Arch MCVS) > > [with DaRCS being hopefully added soon] I see a rudimentary Monotone back end in CVS, too. Are you planning to finish that? > Of those, when starting a new project, I wouldn't want to recommend any one > in particular: they all have their strength and weaknesses. I don't think > it's our role to pimp one over another. And given the fact that Emacs > provides no particular support to start a project under either of those VCS > anyway, I think we should simply punt on this issue. RMS said to drop it, so I had already removed the recommendations from CVS head. -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a> ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: Manual policy (Re: Emacs-devel Digest, Vol 44, Issue 65) 2007-10-11 15:03 ` Eric S. Raymond @ 2007-10-11 15:05 ` David Kastrup 0 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: David Kastrup @ 2007-10-11 15:05 UTC (permalink / raw) To: esr; +Cc: Stefan Monnier, emacs-devel "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com> writes: > Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>: >> Let's see what we currently support: >> >> (RCS CVS SVN SCCS Bzr Git Hg Mtn Arch MCVS) >> >> [with DaRCS being hopefully added soon] > > I see a rudimentary Monotone back end in CVS, too. Are you planning to > finish that? Mtn? -- David Kastrup ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2007-10-12 18:09 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 8+ messages (download: mbox.gz follow: Atom feed -- links below jump to the message on this page -- [not found] <20071010211743.5104873931@grelber.thyrsus.com> 2007-10-10 21:44 ` Manual policy (Re: Emacs-devel Digest, Vol 44, Issue 65) Eric S. Raymond 2007-10-10 22:00 ` Manoj Srivastava 2007-10-10 22:07 ` Jason Rumney 2007-10-10 22:55 ` Eric S. Raymond 2007-10-12 18:09 ` Stephen J. Turnbull 2007-10-11 14:46 ` Stefan Monnier 2007-10-11 15:03 ` Eric S. Raymond 2007-10-11 15:05 ` David Kastrup
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