From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Eric S. Raymond" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Apologia for bzr Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2014 06:52:00 -0500 Organization: Eric Conspiracy Secret Labs Message-ID: <20140105115200.GA6309@thyrsus.com> References: <20140103152117.GA16679@c3po> <20140104082857.GA22010@thyrsus.com> <874n5ikap7.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> Reply-To: esr@thyrsus.com NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1388922756 23688 80.91.229.3 (5 Jan 2014 11:52:36 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2014 11:52:36 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Lennart Borgman , Richard Stallman , Emacs-Devel devel To: "Stephen J. Turnbull" Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sun Jan 05 12:52:43 2014 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1VzmG2-0004BP-BV for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 05 Jan 2014 12:52:42 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:57551 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VzmG2-0000HL-16 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Sun, 05 Jan 2014 06:52:42 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:34937) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VzmFv-0000HD-6H for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 05 Jan 2014 06:52:39 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VzmFq-0002px-Ul for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sun, 05 Jan 2014 06:52:35 -0500 Original-Received: from static-71-162-243-5.phlapa.fios.verizon.net ([71.162.243.5]:53321 helo=snark.thyrsus.com) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VzmFq-0002pk-Qq; Sun, 05 Jan 2014 06:52:30 -0500 Original-Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 42AE5380834; Sun, 5 Jan 2014 06:52:00 -0500 (EST) Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <874n5ikap7.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> X-Eric-Conspiracy: There is no conspiracy User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] X-Received-From: 71.162.243.5 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:167358 Archived-At: Stephen J. Turnbull : > >> Mostly there *aren't* any "standard modern terms", > > You're getting too deep here. I'm pretty sure what's under discussion > is cut vs. kill, paste v. yank. Well, at that level, yes. > That's not what Eric's talking about. The point he is making, it > seems to me, is that Emacs is not an editor, it is a text editing > environment or toolkit. Similarly, git is not a VCS, it is an > environment for developing a VCS. That's exactly correct. Of the level git folks call "plumbing", anyway - it's almost pure mechanism, no policy. What they call "porcelain" is a layer on top of that which provides policy and UI. The analogy between the C core and Emacs Lisp is not perfect, but neither is it strained or silly. Emacs jargon is complex in the same way git jargon is because both bottom layers provide a richness and degree of orthogonality that mone of the competition quite matches. An important difference is that git porcelain is rather a shambles compared to Emacs Lisp - usable, but ugly and sharp-edged. Eli's complaints are not without justice. Alas for git's competition, the power of the plumbing combined with the social momentum of the project as a whole has more than compensated for the porcelain's deficiencies. -- Eric S. Raymond