Re: Why do GNOMEdevelopers almost exclusively use git mirrors and for example not bzr mirrors

["Ali Sabil" <ali sabil gmail com>]

On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 12:08 PM, Olav Vitters <olav bkor dhs org> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 08, 2008 at 08:14:50AM +0100, Ross Burton wrote:
>  > On Tue, 2008-04-08 at 08:35 +0200, Jaap A. Haitsma wrote:
>  > > I was just wondering why many GNOME developers are using git mirror
>  > > and for example not a bzr mirror? If I for example read
>  > > http://live.gnome.org/DistributedSCM I have the feeling that bzr would
>  > > also be a very good fit. However I haven't seen any gnome.org project
>  > > in a bzr mirror while of many projects there exists git mirrors.
>
>  I've been talking with Elijah to determine what is needed in a DSCM.
>  Basically, Bzr should be enhanced/improved to have branches in one
>  checkout directory. For some reason this is important (for real
>  developers.. not me:). E.g. DSCM will likely mean lots of small
>  (private) branches; loads more than with a central system.
>
I never really got to understand why this is so important personally,
I can just affirm that is is just a matter if habit. I was used to
having all the branches in the same repository while I was using
Monotone (few years ago), when I later switched to use bzr I got
slightly confused, but now I find the 1 branch / directory far more
user friendly, it even encourages people to have a branched
development workflow (which is what we want don't we?), because all
the branches are visible, they are no longer just mere "live tags" as
in git.

>  There are other things as well, but Git has similar drawbacks, so it
>  isn't Bzr specific.
>
I completely agree with you concerning this, there are many drawbacks,
and the most important one to me is that many users are used to
centralized workflows. However there is a very nice feature in bzr
that removes this drawback: bound branches.

>  Note that I look for a DSCM system, not Git. It might be Git, but I
>  haven't decided (DSCM development is pretty fast, so perfect system
>  changes pretty often).
>
Git imho is a good repository format, but the required frontend to use
its power efficiently whil remaining user friendly is not there yet.

>
>  > Well, there are bzr mirrors (I've got a few SJ branches in bzr for
>  > example), and don't forget the huge Launchpad mirror of GNOME.  Also,
>  > bzr-svn in my experience isn't as bulletproof as git-svn which has put
>  > me off doing all of my svn work in bzr repositories just yet.
>
>  This doesn't really matter when GNOME uses Bzr/Git/hg. Then '$RCS-svn'
>  link is not important anymore.
>
bzr-svn in the same way as hg-svn have been plagued with the
python-svn binding leak problems, also bzr-svn and git-svn are not
really comparable, since git-svn is a separate tool with its own
command set (correct me if I am wrong), while bzr-svn is a plugin that
adds svn support to bzr, and thus allows you to use transparently all
the available bzr commands on your repository.