Re: It's not yet time to anoint git, or anything else

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Wed, 02 Jan 2008 15:54:36 +0100 Tassilo Horn <address@hidden> wrote: 

TH> Ted Zlatanov <address@hidden> writes:

>> Has there ever been an ELisp-based VCS?  Should we at least consider
>> it?  The advantages are significant for this group of developers, and
>> it would certainly benefit other users.  The major disadvantage
>> (besides having to write the code), I imagine, is incompatibility with
>> other VCSs, and that can be addressed by a bridge to CVS/Git/Arch/etc
>> as deemed appropriate (similar to the git-svn bridge).

TH> I'd say that this would be a monster-job where we simply don't have the
TH> man-power to do that.  And I don't see what those significant advantages
TH> would be.  Could you elaborate on that?

- clean VC mode integration
- no extra utilities
- self-contained, extensible code
- designed to meet the developers' needs
- most of us like ELisp better than the other languages used to implement VCSs 

I'm sure we could come up with more, but I thought the above were
obvious so I didn't list them explicitly.

TH> IMO an elisp solution would bring at least those drawbacks:

TH>   - huge effort to write and maintain it

I don't think the effort is *huge* since there's so many existing VCS
implementations.  It's certainly not trivial and I already mentioned
that writing the code was a major disadvantage.

TH>   - since we get it right and reliable it may take very long

I didn't suggest it was an easy path, I only asked if we should consider
it.  So far everyone thinks we shouldn't, and that's a valid answer.  I
am glad we at least discussed it.

TH>   - worse performance than a highly optimized C solution

This is always a concern with ELisp code, and fortunately Emacs supports
linking to C functions and libraries when needed.

TH>   - since emacs is single-threaded any VC operation would block emacs

Yes, that's a significant drawback with any large-scale code implemented
in Emacs.

Thanks
Ted