From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: David Kastrup Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: dVCS vs. CVS Date: Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:05:11 +0100 Message-ID: <857iilbozs.fsf@lola.goethe.zz> References: <87y7b36ojw.fsf@bzg.ath.cx> <87prwd7j8l.GNU's_Not_Unix!%yavor@gnu.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1199721863 32462 80.91.229.12 (7 Jan 2008 16:04:23 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2008 16:04:23 +0000 (UTC) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Jan 07 17:04:44 2008 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1JBuSw-00075L-8E for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:04:42 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1JBuSZ-0007PX-57 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 07 Jan 2008 11:04:19 -0500 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1JBuSW-0007PN-AZ for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 07 Jan 2008 11:04:16 -0500 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1JBuST-0007Os-N3 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 07 Jan 2008 11:04:14 -0500 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1JBuST-0007Op-Hp for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 07 Jan 2008 11:04:13 -0500 Original-Received: from mail-in-01.arcor-online.net ([151.189.21.41]) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1JBuSS-0002MW-W9 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 07 Jan 2008 11:04:13 -0500 Original-Received: from mail-in-11-z2.arcor-online.net (mail-in-11-z2.arcor-online.net [151.189.8.28]) by mail-in-01.arcor-online.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0FF501039A2 for ; Mon, 7 Jan 2008 17:04:06 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: from mail-in-17.arcor-online.net (mail-in-17.arcor-online.net [151.189.21.57]) by mail-in-11-z2.arcor-online.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id EF2E2346AC5 for ; Mon, 7 Jan 2008 17:04:05 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: from lola.goethe.zz (dslb-084-061-007-060.pools.arcor-ip.net [84.61.7.60]) by mail-in-17.arcor-online.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id D13352BB0A0 for ; Mon, 7 Jan 2008 17:04:05 +0100 (CET) Original-Received: by lola.goethe.zz (Postfix, from userid 1002) id CDABF1CCF8D9; Mon, 7 Jan 2008 17:05:11 +0100 (CET) In-Reply-To: <87prwd7j8l.GNU's_Not_Unix!%yavor@gnu.org> (Yavor Doganov's message of "Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:23:06 +0200") User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.0.50 (gnu/linux) X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV 0.91.2/5419/Mon Jan 7 15:18:58 2008 on mail-in-17.arcor-online.net X-Virus-Status: Clean X-detected-kernel: by monty-python.gnu.org: Linux 2.4-2.6 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:86490 Archived-At: Yavor Doganov writes: > Bastien wrote: >> >> The risk of switching to a dVCS is not one of loosing >> functionnalities, but one of loosing those developers who don't want >> to learn a new tool (I don't think there are any here...?) > > Maybe there aren't, and probably what I am going to say does not > relate at all to the Emacs project. But there are two important > things that were missed in that huge thread: > > Lifting the barrier - > > dVCS (and the fact that there are many of them) are a nightmare for > contributors who are not programmers, like translators and > documentation writers. Sorry, but that's nonsense. The fact that there many of them does not cause any headaches except for the one picking out one, and a version control system that allows you to mess up in private rather than clobbering a public repository is certainly much less of an impediment for learning then one where organizing any contributions of you with the help of a VCS requires you to have write access to the central canonical repository used and needed by everybody. Many non-technical persons have little qualms messing up their own system completely and starting over when getting acquainted with software. But they better be less non-chalant about messing up a central repository. > A dVCS is a sophisticated tool and a complicated concept that such > people do not understand, or at least they do after substantial > investment of time and sweat. But they don't need to understand the distributed aspect. They can just work with their own repository without ever getting commit access to the central one, and create patches and offer them. When those get accepted upstream, their repository will notice when it is next updated and drop the duplication. They can do much more useful work without being a risk. > Autoconf, Automake, m4, Gnulib and other projects switched to Git some > time ago. One would expect that there will be an avalanche of new > contributors who were not volunteering only because they needed a > modern VCS to go ahead. False assumption -- pretty much the same > people hack on these projects after the switch. Sure. The question is whether they are more effective in that manner. Linus Torvalds averages something in the order of hundreds of daily patch sets for reviewing, applying, handling in the Linux kernel. He would not be doing that using CVS. And others would be much harder pressed to test their individual kernel versions and do development on it. -- David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum