Re: Emacs Bazaar repository

[Mike Mattie <codermattie@gmail.com>]

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On Tue, 18 Mar 2008 17:13:23 -0700
Thomas Lord <lord@emf.net> wrote:

> Chong Yidong wrote:
> > We could, y'know, stick with CVS.
> >   
> 
> 
> I'm not so sure that that's a crazy idea.   
> 
> You could add in a couple of shell scripts to do
> fancy merging tricks and keep track of the history
> of "patches" submitted and applied, keeping all of
> that new meta-data under CVS.
> 
> Contributors could use git if they want, as long as
> they don't mind using some of those scripts to prepare
> patches to submit.
> 
> You get the "dvcs" effect that way, without changing
> the vcs....
> 
> If it's done in simple and clean ways then people
> could add on features like web browsing interfaces
> and "log" reporting features.

If you were going to invest your time and skills into hacking on a VCS do you
really want to choose coding out-of-tree scripts for CVS ?

Any ideas that would retro-fit DVCS features onto archaic VCS systems
would be more effective for Emacs in vc I think. From there you could
at least expect a normalized API for common VCS operations and a larger
audience for your features.

It seems better to work on a better future for a modern VCS system, all things equal,
than working on arranging the flowers at CVS's funeral.

Your analysis from the Shift Selection thread is meticulous IMHO, this must be
a floater (idea).

btw, I have coded some large shell scripts regretfully. Even basic string operations are
     not simple ; hence perl. I doubt that any fancy merging tricks can emerge in sane 
     form without writing a FOO -> bash compiler.

     The auto-tools suite is essentially useful, but I doubt anyone is thrilled by
     maintaining autoconf.

     even if you get daring and use co-processes to leverage an external "to bash"
     translator to feedback complex semantics into your bash core, many, 
     if not most programs cannot read from pipes without SIGPIPE. The mmap assumption
     is almost universal these days.

     If you need any more horror stories along these lines, I will share them privately :)

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