[Gnu-arch-users] Re: Rationale for `revc' and `bzr'

[Matthieu MOY]

Ludovic Courtès said:
> Hi,
>
> address@hidden (James Blackwell) writes:
>
>> Anybody that considers continuing the tla and/or baz code base should
>> bear
>> in mind that the two teams that were working on the codebases decided to
>> go for full rewrites.
>
> Well, anybody looking for a version control system should bear in mind
> that there have been so many GNU Arch enthusiasts, and so many
> developers eager to contribute to it during years, that it /can't/ be a
> bad VCS.  Or am I missing something?  ;-)

It's not a /bad/ VCS. At a time, it was even "excellent" in the sense that
there were no better open source alternatives. Its's just that the
experience, and the comparison with more recent alternatives showed that a
number of design choices lead to bad performances and overly complicated
user interface.

Today, we are able, and we want to do better.

> To me it looks like Monotone and especially GIT exacerbated the
> competition among VCS projects, and also paved the way for a new,
> better, storage model.  I have the impression that _these_ are the main
> reasons for the two full rewrites.

Absolutely. The same was true at the time of CVS. People were using it,
people were happy with it, but now, we know that there are much better
alternatives, and very few people would want to migrate back to CVS.

> Additionally, I don't think a better storage model necessarily makes a
> better VCS.

No, but it may be a necessary condition.

-- 
Matthieu