Re: bzr repository ready?

[Karl Fogel]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:
>    Everytime I open a technical document and see that the vertical
>    scrollbar thumb fills a good chunk of its allowed space, I feel
>    relieved. So I prefer to keep my document on its own page, where it
>    looks shorter. Perhaps putting a text at the end of your document like
>    "if you think that this is insanely complicated there is a simpler, less
>    powerful approach described on BzrQuickStartForEmacsDevs"
>
> The simpler approach should be the first recommendation we mention,
> because it will be right for more people, and so that those people
> won't get discouraged trying to understand the more complex approach.

We should point people first to BzrForEmacsDevs (which describes a
natively distributed setup), and just make sure that people know the
other approaches are available if they want that.

Elsewhere, I have seen people new to Bazaar make the mistake of trying
an approach that seemed "simpler" to them (usually similar to what they
were accustomed to from CVS and Subversion), only to pay the price later
when most other Bazaar users couldn't support them or understand the way
they were working -- because what they were doing was so different from
the way one works with Bazaar once one knows Bazaar.

Once you understand Bazaar, BzrForEmacsDevs actually feels *less*
complex (because it uses the default type of branch and a standard
distributed workflow), while BzrQuickStartForEmacsDevs feels more
complex (because it involves a bound branch and a non-distributed
workflow).

Offering options is not itself a problem, as long as we help people
choose among those options.  All our documents should make clear that
the native dVCS approach is the recommended way, and that the
quick-start way should be considered a stopgap.  Then each person will
be informed enough to make the right decision for them.

The way to do that is to point to the full dVCS way by default, while
making sure that the quick-start way is readily available, and that the
relationship between the documents is clear.

-Karl