Re: Prefer Mercurial instead of git

["Óscar Fuentes" <ofv@wanadoo.es>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> If we are supposed to restrict ourselves to what VC or Magit offer,
> then why do we need to switch to git?  One of the main reasons, we are
> told, is that git is so powerful, and can be used to do jobs that bzr
> users can only dream about.

I don't think that that is "one of the main reasons."

The "main reasons" is that bzr is dying, learning it is a hurdle for new
contributors and most Emacs contributors use something else for the
other projects they work on.

Choosing git was, simply, the result of a popularity contest.

> Why do you want me to artificially restrain myself from learning those
> powerful features and using them to my benefit?

You are free to use whatever you like and do the amount of learning
effort that pleases you, of course. What I dispute is your implicit
claim of "git is complex, not-so-well documented and has a not-so-good
UI, hence learning it will be hard." For Eli's definition of "learning",
the claim may be true. For somebody else's definition of "learning",
it is not. Not everyone is interested on a thorough study of the tool
"just in case" when some simple instructions are enough to incorporate
their edits into Emacs' repository.

> IOW, a change in a major development tool is not an easy decision
> precisely _because_ it requires one to learn the new tool, and learn
> it thoroughly.  Otherwise, the switch is a waste of energy.  Saying
> that the complexity is a red herring because one should simply
> disregard the complex and the powerful features makes very little
> sense to me.  Would you suggest that someone uses Emacs as a fancy
> Notepad, just because the rest is not really needed?  I doubt that.
>
> Now, I didn't mean, of course, that one must familiarize oneself with
> all the commands and options.  But the key concepts, the "soul" of the
> tool, its basic principles of operation and its philosophy

This paragraph reflects my POV, but somehow contradicts the previous
one.

> -- without learning that, you will never be able to use that one
> command that solves a particular problem, when you need that.

For those cases, a web search will quickly provide the solution. One
advantage of belonging to a huge user base is that somebody, somewhere,
had your same problem on the past, and helpful experts abound.