[OT] DVCS

[Russel Winder]

On Wed, 2010-10-27 at 12:02 +0300, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Oct 2010 21:42:32 +0300, Russel Winder <russel at russel.org.uk>  
> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 2010-10-25 at 10:20 -0700, Bill Baxter wrote:
> >> I'm not a huge fan of Bazaar :-p ,
> >
> > Hummm... May I ask why?
> 
> Could someone please explain to me why is a VCS other than the three big  
> ones (SVN, Git and HG) is worth using for an open-source project such as  
> this?

Because it is good. Because there are four major players in the game,
including Bazaar.

> I have never used Bazaar, DARCS and Monotone, and only briefly used HG,  
> and I acknowledge that they may be better than Git in some aspects.  

They are, but the problem is that currently there is no scientific and
objective data, all views on this are opinion and adherence to either
fashion or tribalism.

> However, IMHO, one of the main decisions for a VCS for a public project is  
> its accessibility. SVN is the most popular one, but it's pretty  
> established that SVN isn't anywhere as productive as DVCSes, and obviously  
> it can't be used in a distributed manner.

The only sensible use for Subversion in a FOSS project is not to use it.
Bazaar, Mercurial and Git are the VCS tools for FOSS projects.  Why?
Because DVCS aligns with the principles of FOSS.  Subversion is all
about creating an elite priesthood.

Subversion is fine is a context where the entire developer population
have access and are permanently connected to the Internet and are only
allowed to work when so connected -- i.e. in companies where no working
outside the "boundary fence" is allowed.  But the FOSS community has
outgrown the Subversion model.
 
> If I'd consider contributing to an open-source project using a VCS I'm  
> unfamiliar with, it's quite likely that I'd get turned off by the hurdle  
> of downloading, installing and learning to use the respective VCS.

It's not the downloading that is the problem so much as the unfamiliar
with.

> Russel wrote in another, unrelated thread:
> > Of course using BitBucket or Launchpad may well be more likely to get
> > support as Mercurial and Bazaar are so much more usable that Git.
> 
> I'm sorry, but to me that sounds like a biased personal opinion stated as  
> if it was an objective fact :( I seriously doubt that any project would  
> get more "support" if it used an obscure (albeit possibly better in some  
> ways) DVCS, unless the intended audience for the project's contributors is  
> already familiar with that DVCS. Maybe Bazaar etc. is more popular with  
> EMACS users/hackers?

I'll accept that there is an element of personal opinion -- I believe
that Git is over-complicated both in operational model and command line.
Bazaar and Mercurial beat Git hand down in my usability.  As noted above
no-one to date has objective data so all statements on this are opinion.
This includes your view on Git :-)

I wouldn't say Bazaar was more popular with the Emacs developers, there
was a huge row about it and there are still rumblings.  However Bazaar
is the official VCS for Emacs.

> Also, I think that it's pretty hard to beat the workflow that GitHub  
> facilitates for open-source projects (with one-click forking and pull  
> requests).

For personal individual working GitHub is fine.  However, as far as I
know, it has no notion of team.  Launchpad has both the notion of
personal and of team.  For uncontrolled FOSS this perhaps doesn't
matter, but it makes it a lot easier to actually emulate the high priest
elite that many project like to have. 

-- 
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder at ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel at russel.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder
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