Re: [Gnu-arch-users] distinguished branch name, "clone"

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "Colin" == Colin Walters <address@hidden> writes:

    Colin> And that's exactly the problem - tla's verbosity and
    Colin> general complexity have so far generally seemed to keep the
    Colin> novices away.  That's what I want to fix.

An analogy: It's not necessarily a good idea to make it easy to
pretend that arch is CVS, even though use of arch provides much more
potential capability, any more than the high source-level
compatibility of C++ syntax with that of C leads to good C++ style.

The popularity of languages like python, with its "explicit is better
than implicit" mantra, makes me wonder if verbosity is as big a
barrier as you think.

    >> Not really. There are two common idioms I've encountered with
    >> CVS: HEAD as unstable with branches being stabilised and
    >> released.  HEAD as stable with branches for experimentation and
    >> another set of branches for releases.

    Colin> I have personally never encountered a project that uses the
    Colin> latter paradigm.

XEmacs tried it.  It failed, primarily because CVS lacks the support
for branches that arch provides.  People "knew" in advance it wouldn't
work, so they bitched and dragged their heels and supported each
others' insistance that you have to work on the trunk or it's too
hard, and everything of interest ended up on the main devel branch
anyway.  So we ended up switching to devel on the trunk.

But even the worst detractors of the idea in _practice_ did not
disagree with it as a theoretical strategy.  AFAIK the jury is still
out on the theoretical value of the approach.

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