Re: [Arx-users] Why not ArX?

[Walter Landry]

Kevin Smith <address@hidden> wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> Recently, I asked myself: Why isn't ArX getting much attention?
> 
> Here's the background behind that question: I am completely sold on the 
> concept of distributed version control, so I have been researching and 
> experimenting for about a year now. I have evaluated (to varying 
> depths): arch, ArX, monotone, darcs, codeville, and archipel.

archipel is one that I had not heard of.  It looks even more rough
than codeville.

> Of those, ArX and monotone seem the most promising for my own projects. 
> Both are in C++. ArX is substantially more stable. Yet monotone seems to 
> have a much more active discussion list, and seems to have several 
> active code contributors. That seems odd.
> 
> My first thought was that people might be ignoring ArX because they 
> believe it is merely a pale fork of arch (which it clearly is not).

I think this may be the critical point.

> But when I did a little research, I see that ArX is simply flying
> under the radar. The following pages include lists of distributed
> version control systems:

<see below>

> So now I'm thinking that the biggest reason people aren't joining the 
> ArX community in larger numbers is that ArX is a hard project to find 
> out about. Monotone has had strong buzz for a while, as has arch. Even 
> darcs hit the spotlight recently with its 1.0 release.
> 
> Is it time to crank up an ArX marketing machine? Would it be better to 
> wait a bit for the 2.x series to mature a little more?

I think this is a good time.  I wanted to wait until ArX 2 came out
because the changes were so dramatic.

> Unfortunately, since deciding to evalutate ArX a few weeks ago, I 
> haven't actually been able to use it on real tasks. So although I still 
> hope ArX turns out to be as good as it looks, I'm not yet in a position 
> where I can publicly state that it's a great tool.
> 
> However, I would be very willing to help raise awareness of ArX. Here 
> are some concrete marketing tasks that might increase ArX adoption, and 
> some of which I would be willing to help with:
> 
> - Submit ArX to the maintainers of pages like those mentioned above

I actually did a lot of this about a week or so ago.  I am more than
happy if you want to pursue this.  What I did for the links you
mentioned

>   http://better-scm.berlios.de/

I contacted the author of this page.  He was under the impression that
ArX is just an implementation of Arch.  I sent a followup, but I have
not heard back from him.

>   http://www.venge.net/monotone/others.html

Graydon Hoare certainly knows that ArX exists.  We had a short
discussion when I thanked him for his xdelta implementation.

>   http://www.thefreecountry.com/programming/versioncontrol.shtml

I have not contacted these people.  It has an odd collection of links.

>   http://zooko.com/revision_control_quick_ref.html

I sent Zooko an email, and he promised to look into ArX when he has time.

>   http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Configuration_Management/Tools/

I submitted the ArX website to them, but I have not heard back.

>   http://www.cmcrossroads.com/bradapp/links/scm-links.html#Free_CM_Tools

I have not contacted this site either.  It also has an odd collection
of links.

>   http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Apps/scm.html

As you noted, this one lists ArX.  It would be nice to have it in its
own section, especially since the other implementations listed in the
same sentece as ArX are all deceased.

>   http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/scm.html

I have been thinking about sending him an email.  It requires more
thought, since I would like to discuss what is good or bad about ArX,
rather than just "have you heard of ArX?".

>   http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2004/01/29/scm_overview.html

This is the same person who has the better-scm site.

> And there are some relevant blogs:
>   http://sourcefrog.net/weblog/software/vc/
>   http://del.icio.us/tv/version-control

There is also Colin Walter's site, web.verbum.org.  In any case, blogs
also require more thought.

> - Submit release news items to lwn.net

I have a freshmeat entry that shows up indirectly on lwn.net.  I have
no idea what lwn's criteria is for an announcement in the main
section.  If you had the time, maybe it would be good to find out.

> - Create .rpm .deb and gentoo ebuilds

Making binaries is hampered by some licensing problems with Boost.
The Boost Graph Library (BGL) is under a GPL-incompatible license.
The BGL authors are working on fixing this.  I pinged them about a
week ago, and they were waiting to hear back from the lawyers.  Until
then, distributing binaries is a little dodgy.

> - Write articles for lwn, newsforge, etc

I am vaguely working on a comparison between ArX and the other
distributed SCM's (monotone, tla, darcs, codeville, svk).  The notes
are still rather jumbled.

> - Make the ArX home page prettier

I would like this to happen, but I am not an artist.  It would also
make it easier for all of the other things to happen.  If you could
help with this, that would be fabulous.

> - Port ArX to MS Windows (and Mac OS X)

This is on my TODO list after cryptographic signatures.  I have to get
my Windows partition working.  Marc Recht has been helping with OS X
using pkgsrc.  I have done a little work on OS X with fink.  It almost
works, and I haven't had time to figure out the (probably minor)
errors.

One last marketing thing that I would like to do is to have an ArX
version of the linux tree.  It would be a good stress test.  

Cheers,
Walter