You seem to be under the assumption that we would do
everything the same
way as we do today if we switched to another VCS.
You talk about solving real problems:
What if publishing my new module to Drupal's servers was no
more
complicated than "bzr push
sftp://bzr.drupal.org/~mikl/asdf-module".
The Launchpad.net guys have done this. It's real and
working. I've used
it myself.
Instead of using multiple heads and that kind of nastiness,
you could
just use bzr-style branches. A different physical folder for
each
branch. That's something almost anyone should be able to
comprehend.
asdf-module-d5 is for drupal 5 and asdf-module-d6 is for
Drupal 6. Simple.
Thanks to new algorithms, merging is a breeze (3-way merging
can still
require human judgment, but is still a lot easier than it
was in the old
days), so if I wanted to try out Crazy Idea X on Drupal
core, I'd just
create my own branch/folder, drupal-cix and muck about with
the code,
committing regularly, without disturbing anyone else. And if
some of the
stuff I did (but maybe not all of it) was usable, one of the
core devs
might merge some of my changes.
So if we were to switch (and I'm not saying we have to, but
I still
think it would be a benefit to do so at some point in the
future when we
have a Windows GUI client and other requirements sorted
out), we should
be looking to make our structure simpler, not more complex.
Karoly Negyesi wrote:
> I am quoting this mail almost in full because it is so
typical: "CVS sucks! Let's switch!" This is so
irrevelant -- everyone on this list is aware of the
shortcomings of CVS without taking Drupal in regard -- most
troublesome is the lack of version controlled directories
and renames. But the problem is that we NEED to take Drupal
in regard. And then the questions to answer are: Why do we
want to switch? To answer that, list the current problems of
our contrib authors. Go out and do the research, ask them.
How will git or Mercurial help solving those? E.g. people
who do not get at all what a branch a tag will have less
problem with this when facing all the possibilites, say, git
offer? Think of human issues here. Think someone who needs
all her wits to put together a module or the template.php of
a theme and then needs to fight the monster an RCS is. Can
you explain the multiple heads in Mercurial to her in a very
simple way? Let me doubt.
>
>> I agree with Karoly that Git (or bzr or Mercurial
or...) is not the
>> answer to all our problems. Especially the lack of
good, stable
>> Windows/Mac GUI clients for all the aforementioned
systems is a big
>> showstopper. TortoiseHg is out, but still very much
beta.
>>
>> I think the keyword here is _eventually_. I hope
that we can all agree
>> that CVS is past its prime. Its many predecessors
hold many advantages
>> over it. Many new features that CVS will probably
never get.
>> So while we're not in a position to switch to
something else right now
>> or this year, it would still be wise to consider
the future.
>>
>> I could rant endlessly about why distributed SCM is
great and boosts
>> productivity, makes it easier to try out crazy
ideas. Makes branching
>> and merging easier and so on, but I suppose you all
know this.
>>
>> So all I'm saying is that we ought to consider
switching to something
>> else at some point in the future, because CVS isn't
that great now and
>> is not likely to get better.
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