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: source repository Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2007 13:26:00 +0900 Message-ID: <87tzskyeuf.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> References: <200707031442.28402.pogonyshev@gmx.net> <468A3997.2040500@f2s.com> <200707031514.17225.pogonyshev@gmx.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1183524101 17296 80.91.229.12 (4 Jul 2007 04:41:41 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2007 04:41:41 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org, Paul Pogonyshev To: Eli Zaretskii Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Jul 04 06:41:39 2007 connect(): Connection refused 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 1I5wgN-00068X-Ak for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 04 Jul 2007 06:41:39 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1I5wgM-0003E8-HB for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 04 Jul 2007 00:41:38 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1I5wgI-0003BY-Lz for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 04 Jul 2007 00:41:34 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1I5wgI-0003B2-8W for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 04 Jul 2007 00:41:34 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1I5wgI-0003At-27 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 04 Jul 2007 00:41:34 -0400 Original-Received: from mtps02.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp ([130.158.97.224]) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1I5wgE-0001F4-PB; Wed, 04 Jul 2007 00:41:31 -0400 Original-Received: from uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp [130.158.99.156]) by mtps02.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix) with ESMTP id 703578003; Wed, 4 Jul 2007 13:14:41 +0900 (JST) Original-Received: by uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 973541A2968; Wed, 4 Jul 2007 13:26:01 +0900 (JST) In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: VM 7.17 under 21.5 (beta28) "fuki" (+CVS-20070621) XEmacs Lucid X-detected-kernel: Linux 2.6, seldom 2.4 (older, 4) 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:74269 Archived-At: Eli Zaretskii writes: > > Oh. A pity Emacs still uses so old system. > > Why should we care how old it is, if it suits our needs? Because it doesn't suit your needs. Didn't you just have a month of acrimony over how to handle branching after the 22.1 release? Don't you still completely lack any policy about how things will be handled in the future except "Richard will decide, after hearing the advice of other developers"? Doesn't that still bother at least a few of the core developers? Richard has said it's ok to merge multi-tty, but I detect deep breaths around the table, as nobody is quite ready to go put it in CVS. *All* of that would be unnecessary with any modern dSCM, including the deep breaths. Anybody with 100MB (well, that's what XEmacs requires w/o packages, so GNU Emacs might need 200MB?) of spare disk space can do a trial merge with no risk. > We are not exactly spoiled by abundance of free resources to invest > effort in jobs that are ``nice to have''. This is an investment with returns that Warren Buffett can only dream of. > Just think how many man-hours will be wasted if every Emacs > developer and contributor will have to install, learn, and set up > an unfamiliar configuration management package. Not so. You were correct the first time: it's an "investment", not a "waste". The real issue is preserving history across the transition. This is costly in thought and time, and requires some effort, planning, and trial-and-error by the staff. But not that much; ask Miles---he thought it was worth putting Emacs into Arch for personal use, AIUI, then graciously offered it to the world. As for the rest, a bridge from a dSCM to CVS is trivial; people who checkout from CVS and mail patches can continue to do so. (It does require duplicate diskspace for the repository, of course.) Installation of darcs, git, and mercurial are trivial[1] on all open source systems that I use (GNU/Linux, NetBSD, Mac OS X/MacPorts). I assume that would extend to other GNU systems (including Cygwin and perhaps MSYS), other *BSD, and Mac OS X/Fink. Installation of git from source on the open source systems I use was straightforward, as it was on Solaris 9. git and darcs may be hard to install from source on non-POSIX systems, but Mercurial should be no problem (100% python). Familiarity is not a problem as long as only one of the SCMs is chosen as the official one. The semantics of the commands corresponding to checkout, update, and commit are similar at the level of what "every Emacs developer and contributor" will have to learn. Branching is different, but perhaps more intuitive; however most contributors will be working with the mainline, or perhaps Emacs 22, and will not need to worry about it more than once in a year. The people who do need to worry about the subtle semantic differences across various systems are precisely the same people who will benefit hugely from well-supported branching. That's not a net cost, either. Footnotes: [1] Darcs installation can be very clock-time-consuming if you don't already have Haskell (ghc) installed and are a build-from-source type.