GNU Emacs Switches From CVS To Bazaar 198
kfogel writes "GNU Emacs, one of the oldest continuously developed free software projects around, has switched from CVS to Bazaar. Emacs's first recorded version-control commits date from August, 1985. Eight years later, in 1993, it moved to CVS. Sixteen years later, it is switching to Bazaar, its first time in a decentralized version control system. If this pattern holds, GNU Emacs will be in Bazaar for at least thirty-two years ..."
Why 32? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:32 years? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've used both and don't agree. Bazaar's quite good. Not that there's anything wrong with git, either. At this point in their development, I think the old rule is starting to apply: "the smaller the differences, the louder the arguments".
Re:first first? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Search for word dupes"
(interactive)
(search-forward-regexp "[^a-z]\\([a-z]+\\) \\1[^a-z]"))
(global-set-key (kbd "<f7>") 'search-dupe-words)
Re:what's new?; bazaar versus git (Score:5, Insightful)
As Linus explained, the “easier” argument is gone, since they did put really hard work into git’s user interface. They knew that it was bad. And what was the normal interface back then, is now the low-level interface, with a whole new, nice interface on top. (But you can still use the low-level one, when you need it.)
Anyway, maybe it’s me, but I don’t see “easy” per se as a advantage. I prefer efficiency. And more often than I like it, easiness seems to mean less efficiency.
It’s like “Those who give up some efficiency for a little easiness, deserve neither”. ^^
Of course the same is true for too (pointlessly) complicated interfaces too. (Main examples: Emacs and VI.)
The problem is, that most programmers seem to see that level of complexity as static. But it has to adapt to the user, over time. Rise when in need, fall when not. Stepless, if possible.
Instead they think in absolute, black and white, one-dimensional spaces: Either Notepad with Clippy, or Emacs/VM.
It’s so stupid.
To me, git is a tool that is pretty nice in that aspect.
Simple committing and version management for yourself is very easy.
But if you want to do crazy stuff, like go back 10 versions, patch that one with eight other forks, wrap it, and the next five versions, into one version, and put that thing not only back into your repository, but into that of others too... then it doesn’t leave you in the rain, but gives you the tools to do it.
Re:Emacs is in Bazaar (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:what's new?; bazaar versus git (Score:5, Insightful)
"Anyway, maybe it's me, but I don't see "easy" per se as a advantage. I prefer efficiency. And more often than I like it, easiness seems to mean less efficiency."
And sometimes it means more.
The main issue with the interfaces to systems like emacs, or LaTeX or git (the old one; the current interface is not bad) is that they are only really efficient if you use the tools all the time. If you use emacs all day, every day then the interface is probably fine. I constantly use LaTeX and so it's really much more effective for me than a graphical typesetting-type application. If all your software lives in git repos and you work with them most days of the week then it soon becomes second nature.
But many people don't use their tools every day. I'd say that every single one of us have some tools that we do use and do like, but we simply don't need them every day or even every week. And when you're an occasional user, no matter how "power" you are, the kind of cryptic interfaces these tools have become a hindrance, not a help. The UI is not discoverable - it's not clear how to do things you may want - so when you don't use it all the time you forget how to do even simple, common tasks.
You end up spending your time searching the web or grep:ing your own shell history to remind yourself how you do stuff, and the efficiency goes straight out the window.
"So use it more often" isn't an answer. These are tools, not something you use just for their own sake. If you don't need to, say, write a report more than once every three months then you're certainly not going to create the occasional bogus document just so you don't forget how to do things in LaTeX.
So depending on the task, more than on the user, these interfaces can be a help or a major hindrance.
Re:ObSimpsons (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:EMACS discovers "distributed development" (Score:3, Insightful)
bzr has been sponsored by canonical for ages. It grew out of Tom Lord's Arch project, which was the first serious attempt at an open source distributed VCS.
Re:first first? (Score:4, Insightful)
For OP: The key sequence you are looking for is:
<C-M\>s\<\(\w+\) \1\>
Re:Why 32? (Score:3, Insightful)
24 is plausible, too; an arithmetic not geometric progression.
I'm so sorry, but you are utterly wrong.
24 would perhaps be plausible in carpentry or equestrian, or if the numbers were 7 and 14, but in this case, i.e. with software, powers of two and slashdot, there are simply two and only two possible successions to that and those are indeed the 0x20 and some-funky-number-with-cowboyneal-embedded. And that's final. Move along, move along.
Re:Why not git? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why use Git over Bazaar?
Re:Emacs is in Bazaar (Score:1, Insightful)
It's "'Sup dawg!", not "Yo, dawg". That's why you fail it.
Re:Why 32? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:32 years? (Score:4, Insightful)
Git is written in C by people with experience doing complicated things very quickly(kernel programmers).
Bazaar is written in python.
Re:32 years? (Score:3, Insightful)
Somebody mod that up. That is an awesome rant of the best sort, one with experience, opinions, technical details, and examples.
Re:first first? (Score:3, Insightful)
The key sequence you are looking for is:
<C-M\>s\<\(\w+\) \1\>
And they say Unix isn't user-friendly!
Re:first first? (Score:1, Insightful)
Unix isn't beginner-friendly. It is, however, user-friendly. The distinction is important.
A beginner-friendly OS like Windows says "Let me hold your hand. Would you like to do A, B, or C?" And if what you actually wanted to do was D, then you're out of luck. It will probably not know what D is, and if it does know, it will probably tell you you're not allowed to do it.
A user-friendly OS like Unix says "Tell me what to do, and I will do what you say". And when you say "do D", it does D. If you don't know what you want to do, you'd better be prepared to read the manual.
OS X manages to be both beginner-friendly and user-friendly. Unfortunately it is also tied to expensive hardware.