From: Paul Louden <paulthenerd_at_gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2011 13:10:03 -0500

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 12:57 PM, Bryan Childs <godeater_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> Is it *really* necessary that we do that here? There's SO much info out
> there on the net about what it could do for you, that I don't see a lot of
> point of trying to make it rockbox specific here, if there even IS anything
> Rockbox specific about it.
>

I was more trying to be Git specific (rather than DVCS general) than
Rockbox-specific, since I imagine any mentioned benefit on this thread
would relate to Rockbox or there'd be no point bringing it up.
There've been people suggesting we should look at mercurial and bazaar
(and I seem to remember one of those being able to function in ways
that would make it very comfortable both for Git and SVN fans, though
I can't remember which at the moment) so I was thinking maybe we
should clarify why Git should be at the front of the competitors in
terms of functions, rather than just "some of us currently use it"
(especially given mention that alternatives should be very easy to
learn quickly).

It's hard to have a real discussion on which we should use if the
response to "why is this one better" isn't "here's the reasons" but
rather "go out and do the research yourself." Not to mention there's
often a resistance to learning about systems other than the one you
use. People fine with SVN aren't often going to want to go and learn
how to use Git. People familiar with Mercurial can probably share
their experiences in a way that resonates with people sharing a
project with them (Rockbox) better than an arbitrary article on "Why
Mercurial is what you should use" etc.

The original poll is pretty useless in that it creates a false
restriction of Git or SVN, and it's more of a "preference" poll rather
than a reasoned discussion.

Ideally we should start with "what do we want from a version control
system?" What role does it serve in our project? How do we intend to
use it? What features does it need to have? What features would be
nice to add on to those?

Then we look at what exists and see if one of those meets that list of
needs better than SVN. That's a lot more useful than a poll of simple
preferences.
Received on 2011-06-03