Re: On the subject of Git, Bazaar, and the future of Emacs development

[Daniel Colascione]

On 4/4/2013 4:08 PM, Stephen Leake wrote:
> Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:
> 
>>> From: John Wiegley <address@hidden>
>>> Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2013 12:44:43 -0500
>>>
>>> As a data point: if Emacs does decide on Git, I'll become a more active
>>> contributor again; if it doesn't, I have other things to do.  Bzr/Mercurial 
>>> is
>>> enough of a "joy-stealing" barrier that -- like now -- I would not be
>>> interested in submitting my work upstream.  And this same situation is true
>>> for some others as well, as evidenced by voices on this mailing list.
>>
>> I'm very sad to hear that, because I think it is improper for
>> contributors to put up such an ultimatum for a project.  
> 
> It was not expressed as an ultimatum (read "threat"), just as a fact.

I'm also having a very difficutl time reading John's post as an ultimatum. I'd
no different from saying "I'm less likely to contribute to Emacs if it's
rewritten in COBOL". We're all volunteers here, and while at work, I'm paid to
overcome organizational friction, there's no such countervailing force here. We
all work on Emacs because we want to. VCS choice can reduce that desire, and
while that's unfortunate, it's a fact of the world we inhabit.

I see very little justification for choosing anything other than git --- it's
high quality free software that's well on its way to becoming ubiquitous in the
development community. There is no moral, financial, or organizational penalty
to choosing it, and there are reams of advantages. Our choosing git would
advance the cause of free software as much as any other option and would greatly
streamline Emacs development.

As I see it, the only other viable candidate is Mercurial, which, while being
high-quality, actively-developed free software, lacks the user base of git.  If
Mercurial and git are equivalent of technical and ethical grounds, then git
should emerge the victor due to its massive inertia.

So why are we still arguing about this? Why aren't we switching to git?

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