Re: base

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org,
>     miles@gnu.org
> Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2010 19:25:35 +0900
> 
> *sigh* I guess I'm going to have to go into interminable detail on
> this....

Thanks.  However, what you wrote just shows once again that we are
talking on two very different levels.  Your "user" is actually a
hacker who wants to know and understand a lot about low-level details
of the tool's operation.  My idea of a user and the level of this
knowledge users need is very different.  You say that it is impossible
in practice to use tools without such deep knowledge.  I say that it's
possible and prove that by doing it, with bzr and with other tools.

There are a few tools I use where my level of familiarity with the
internals is like yours regarding git, but bzr is not one of them, and
probably never will be.  Still, I have no trouble using it quite
efficiently (no thanks to bzr docs), without having a slightest idea
how it represents the history DAG or what are all those files in the
.bzr subdirectories of my repository.  Contrary to what you say, these
are, IMO, private data, not public data; for example, if bzr changes
its repository format, I as a user don't care as long as there's a
simple way of upgrading to the new format.  The fact that this data is
visible does not mean it's public in the sense that users _should_
look at them, it just means that they _can_.

I don't expect you to agree, so let's leave it at that.  I already
wrote a lot, maybe too much, about my views on this today.