From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Git mirrors Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2011 13:31:41 +0900 Message-ID: <87d3e2rfte.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> References: <8762k095n4.fsf@lifelogs.com> <871uuksdxi.fsf@lifelogs.com> <87lissh32y.fsf@wanadoo.es> <87zkh8e286.fsf@catnip.gol.com> <87d3e4gttq.fsf@wanadoo.es> <87ehyjrhxh.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1318393918 23241 80.91.229.12 (12 Oct 2011 04:31:58 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2011 04:31:58 +0000 (UTC) Cc: =?utf-8?Q?=C3=93scar?= Fuentes , Eli Zaretskii , miles@gnu.org, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Juanma Barranquero Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Oct 12 06:31:53 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([140.186.70.17]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1RDqTx-0002Kn-7y for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 12 Oct 2011 06:31:53 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:51518 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RDqTw-0000SF-PF for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:31:52 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:60812) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RDqTs-0000Rm-TM for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:31:49 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RDqTp-0002hI-K1 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:31:48 -0400 Original-Received: from mgmt2.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp ([130.158.97.224]:35194) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RDqTn-0002gg-J4; Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:31:44 -0400 Original-Received: from uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp [130.158.99.156]) by mgmt2.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix) with ESMTP id 86F3C9707B0; Wed, 12 Oct 2011 13:31:41 +0900 (JST) Original-Received: by uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 815531A2739; Wed, 12 Oct 2011 13:31:41 +0900 (JST) In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: VM 8.2.0a1 under 21.5 (beta31) "ginger" 6c76f5b7e2e3 XEmacs Lucid (x86_64-unknown-linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 3) X-Received-From: 130.158.97.224 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:144952 Archived-At: Juanma Barranquero writes: > On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 11:33, Stephen J. Turnbull > wrote: >=20 > > Promoting an unusable tool merely because it had the GNU label is most > > definitely unfriendly competition. >=20 > Assuming that by "unusable tool" you refer to the past, and even if it > is not accurate (it was lacking, but hardly unusable, or we would not > have been able to use it), The politically committed did use it. Many others refused. Some stopped contributing, others used the git or Arch mirrors. For quite some time, despite the existence of the GNU Savannah, the repo of choice was hosted at Launchpad. > well... which competition? Excuse me? The obvious competition: Subversion, git, Mercurial. The main technical advantage of Bazaar was allowing the technological reactionaries to continue using a centralized system. Subversion would have served that purpose, and is well-supported by Savannah AFAIK. git was and is a much better choice for fostering the "share my Emacs hacks" ethos that has always been a part of this community, but would have required substantial effort on the part of the more conservative members of the community. Mercurial is somewhere in the middle, and defintely not as good as Bazaar at supporting centralized habits, but I have never seen a Mercurial hosting service with the kind of performance problems that intermittently crop up with Bazaar even today, let alone the systematic performance problems of the bzr at the time the decision was made. Nor have I seen any project have really severe issues transitioning from a CVS or Subversion repo to a Mercurial repo with a centralized workflow. All of the above are indisputably free software. > Though I disagreed at the time, chosing a tool is not a race, but a > decision, political as much as anything else. It seems logical to > chose the one you favor, and then try to make it better. Richard made the decision. I don't see Richard making any contributions to Bazaar at all. I see Eli and Stefan reporting bugs, which is indeed a contribution, but hardly *making* it better. Emacs is always waiting on Bazaar, waiting on Savannah, waiting, waiting, waiting. The decision was made, and as I replied to Ted Z, this is GNU policy. However, I don't see a lot of follow-through in the direction you indicate. Am I missing something? > That git or mercurial or darcs or any other tool were available and > free does not change the fact that Bazaar was, nominally at least, > *the* GNU dVCS of choice. Once again, the existence of groff doesn't stop GNU from using TeX. The existence of bash, gawk, and GNU sed doesn't stop GNU from using perl. And so on. > I think the above makes clear that I don't agree with your comment: > "One could argue that Emacs should advocate the use of the strongest > possible "team" of free software tools, rather than being biased to > the use of GNU-labeled tools." That would be technically sound, > politically less so. If by "politically sound" you mean fanboyism, sure. If by "politically sound" you mean "organizing a consensus of the members of the GNU project to cooperate in some endeavor at the expense of their own immediate, local interests", it is indeed arguable that sometimes a GNU project can be left to its own devices so that other projects can take advantage of the best available tools. But as I also said in my message, the argument is over, the decision is made. It is *not* "fanboyism" to abide by the decision until it becomes clear that the decision should be rethought. I disagree with the decision, but I don't see a strong argument for rethinking it. The arguments pro and con haven't changed much in the last 30 years, and it's clear that most members of the Emacs community are perfectly happy with "abiding by the decision". I just object to the way =C3=93scar (inter alia) is being shouted down. He has a point. It would be reasonable to point to the consensus and say, "That's off-topic." But he's not being unfair.