Re: Change to bzr build instructions

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Leo <sdl.web@gmail.com> writes:

> On 2011-03-25 18:18 +0800, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> Please stop the git propaganda here.  The advantages and disadvantages
>> of git vs bzr in this regard are well known and can be found with
>> Google.
>
> I see no propaganda here.  David merely mentions the way git handles
> renames etc which is obviously better than bzr's.

Uh, git does not "handle" renames, tracking them not at all.  That's not
actually "better" (and in fact, git history, particularly annotating and
blaming is not the fastest as one consequence of this design choice).
But it leaves one less opportunity for manual mistakes.

> Why would bzr insist people remember to use bzr mv instead of the
> shell command mv?

Because it is a different approach.  Explicit information, when given,
beats guesswork.  One has to keep in mind that Linux, for which git was
designed, is a large-scale fast-turnaround software system with vast
amounts of information flow and very widely distributed responsibility
and mergeflows.  Maintaining any side information manually (like we do
with ChangeLog files) is more likely to be affected by shoddiness.  We
all know how much fun the ChangeLog files and their merges are in
distributed development.  When people try doing the same things with
slightly different workflow, it is convenient when no conflicts occur as
a result.  So git took the design choice of not even remembering things
that may or may not be shoddily maintained as "side information".

With Bzr, people need to remember to _give_ this information explicitly.
And of course this is relevant for Emacs developers using Bzr directly.

-- 
David Kastrup