Re: Basic Bazaar guide for Emacs hackers.

[Karl Fogel]

Óscar Fuentes <address@hidden> writes:
> [Posted this to help-emacs by accident.]
>
> http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/emacs/BzrQuickStartForEmacsDevs
>
> I know some of you are pushing hard for introducing complete and correct
> dVCS practices among the Emacs developers. That is laudable but IMHO
> unrealistic to expect since day one. So it is intended as a minimum
> knowledge guide for not being left out. It is an appetizer too.
>
> If you think that it is the wrong way to (not) enter dVCS, I'll delete
> it or put a big warning sign at the beginning.

The more options we offer, the more confused people will be.  Also, the
more different workflows developers use, the more difficult it will be
for us to support each other.

Can we please not fall into this tar pit? :-)

I hate to say this, knowing how hard you must have worked on it, but I'm
worried the document will do more harm than good in the long run.  IMHO,
either delete it or maybe just put some kind of warning sign at the
beginning, linking to [1].

Coming from the Subversion-and-CVS world, I needed less than a day to
get used to the Bazaar/distributed way of working.  It just isn't that
hard.  Anyone who works on Emacs can get used to it in about that amount
of time.  Sure, there will be little questions here and there, but the
main loop documented at [1] will be comprehensible to all.

No one here is saying we should introduce "complete and correct dVCS
practices...since day one".  I *am* saying that it is completely
reasonable to expect Emacs developers to read and understand [1], and to
work that way from that point forward, until they understand Bazaar well
enough to vary their workflow as they wish.

There's nothing wrong with the content of BzrQuickStartForEmacsDevs.
It's just that if Emacs developers start doing things that way too, then
the total support burden on the community goes up.  We should not
stimulate that situation if we can avoid it.

Best,
-Karl

[1] http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/BzrForEmacsDevs