Bzr is dying; Emacs needs to move • Hacker News Board

Re: Bzr is dying; Emacs needs to move

#91

Post by wirrbel » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 2:42 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #59

xradionut wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate when people say "git won the war", it sounds like an excuse to close minds and stop progress. What if "Microsoft won the war"? Or vim? Or IBM? Or Java? Or Taco Bell?

As an avid git user, I believe that git's victory against current tools does nothing to stop someone from creating a better DVCS in the future. They'll just have to identify why git won and address those points, if they want to dethrone git.

The success of git is - apart from the speed - related with its property of being the "stupid content tracker".

Git's architecture is a simple bottom-up engineering approach. The user interface (porcellain) builts upon a conceptually simple core (plumbing). Other VCS have defined nice UI which where then implemented by a core that depends on the UI. This top-down approach means that the core components can suddenly become quite complicated and in the end it is hard for the user to get a deeper understanding of the system.

The funny aspect of this is, that a lot of people complain about Gits bad user interface. It turns out however that Git is really easy to grasp.

Re: Bzr is dying; Emacs needs to move

#92

Post by noselasd » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 2:44 PM UTC

thearn4 wrote: post #84

pcx wrote: post #19

Here is a previous discussion on emacs-devel from Mar'13 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2013-03/thread... Stallman's opinion on this subject - http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2013-03/msg009... TLDR Stallman doesn't want Emacs to give up on bzr (also a GNU project) yet. This opinion might change now though.

Just read the link to Stallman's opinion - side question: he signs his name with a Dr. prefix. But did he finish graduate school at MIT?

Well, he did finish a physics degree at Harvard, which awards Doctor of Science titles

Re: Bzr is dying; Emacs needs to move

#93

Post by octo_t » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 2:45 PM UTC

tenfingers wrote: post #38

I wished people would use software based on merits, not on popularity. That being said, Bzr is slow, it was always slow from day 1 -- and slowness is part of the UI experience.

part of something's merits is its popularity.

Re: Bzr is dying; Emacs needs to move

#94

Post by hyperpape » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 2:46 PM UTC

blumentopf wrote: post #87

hyperpape wrote: post #83

I went back and looked at the older discussion, and it doesn't paint Stallman very well as the head of a project. He pins the question of whether to keep using bzr not on whether it is good or whether the Emacs developers want it, but on whether it's being "maintained". But then he seems to define maintenance as having fixed a specific bug that's been around for over a year, blocking a point release. He admits that h…

> it doesn't paint Stallman very well as the head of a project Is this news to you? Cf. e.g. http://www.jwz.org/doc/lemacs.html

shrug More confirmation.

Re: Bzr is dying; Emacs needs to move

#95

Post by cpach » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 2:49 PM UTC

hyperpape wrote: post #83

I went back and looked at the older discussion, and it doesn't paint Stallman very well as the head of a project. He pins the question of whether to keep using bzr not on whether it is good or whether the Emacs developers want it, but on whether it's being "maintained". But then he seems to define maintenance as having fixed a specific bug that's been around for over a year, blocking a point release. He admits that h…

I thought RMS had resigned as Emacs’ maintainer?

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-02/msg021...

Re: Bzr is dying; Emacs needs to move

#96

Post by hyperpape » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 2:54 PM UTC

cpach wrote: post #95

hyperpape wrote: post #83

I went back and looked at the older discussion, and it doesn't paint Stallman very well as the head of a project. He pins the question of whether to keep using bzr not on whether it is good or whether the Emacs developers want it, but on whether it's being "maintained". But then he seems to define maintenance as having fixed a specific bug that's been around for over a year, blocking a point release. He admits that h…

I thought RMS had resigned as Emacs’ maintainer? http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-02/msg021...

Maybe--but the tenor of the discussion strongly suggests, if not implies, that he makes the call about whether they can leave bzr.

Re: Bzr is dying; Emacs needs to move

#97

Post by TacticalCoder » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 2:54 PM UTC

Many Emacs contributors are already using Git and simply publishing everything in Github. Most of the things in my .emacs comes from Github. Simply they're not part of the core Emacs.

I think the issue is not only bzr vs Git. It's also, if I understand things correctly, the super restrictive license that the core Emacs has, making every developer sign papers and send them (by snailmail!? or are scans allowed!?)... And if you several other contributors helping you, you must have them all sign these papers.

I've seen at least one prolific .el Emacs author (I think the mulled/multi-line-edit author) complain about that: saying that out of 10 people who helped him he managed to have nine of them sign the papers and sent them to him and couldn't contact the last one...

And eventually he simply decided to abandon getting all the signatures and went it's own way (i.e. Github / non-core Emacs, like many do).

I'm not well versed in licenses / GPL things but I'm a long time Emacs users and I'm definitely seeing change: now most of the newer (and great) .el files I add to my Emacs are coming from Github.

Re: Bzr is dying; Emacs needs to move

#98

Post by bachback » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 2:58 PM UTC

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #62

bachback wrote: post #28

wow. please, please, you Emacs/LISP gurus out there: make a working modern package manager and integrate the browser like lighttable does. and perhaps rewrite emacs from scratch so that the source code makes sense in today's world not in 1980's world. unfortunately lighttable is staying closed for much too long, but something like it is desperately needed.

LightTable is truly terrible. Adobe beat that team with Brackets without even really trying, and all of the gimmicks it promised have been available in vim and subl for a while. They should do something else with their time.

not true at all. it has this thing called the browser in it, as well as a completely live hooks and a modular system. this here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtXpOD6jFls is impossible in any other editor.

Re: Bzr is dying; Emacs needs to move

#99

Post by mathattack » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 2:59 PM UTC

hyperpape wrote: post #83

I went back and looked at the older discussion, and it doesn't paint Stallman very well as the head of a project. He pins the question of whether to keep using bzr not on whether it is good or whether the Emacs developers want it, but on whether it's being "maintained". But then he seems to define maintenance as having fixed a specific bug that's been around for over a year, blocking a point release. He admits that h…

For better or worse, having a vision is a very different skillset from having the management skillset to make things happen. Sometimes people deride management when talking about the importance of vision and leadership. There is also the current trend of companies giving up managers entirely.

RMS is a prime example of why management is an important skill. It is inefficient for him to do everything himself. It's also inefficient for him to chase people down for all the details. If he had a solid COO who understood his vision, his organization would be much more effective.

Re: Bzr is dying; Emacs needs to move

#100

Post by tonfa » Thu, Jan 02, 2014, 3:01 PM UTC

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #61

tachion wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is also mentioning bad state of Mercurial, any idea what he could have had on mind? What's wrong with Mercurial these days, beside its less widely used than Git?

I'm pretty sure Atlassian is the only major supporter of it, and even they co-host Git on BitBucket (I suspect to stay competitive with GitHub). And in my very biased opinion, Atlassian markets themselves with an aggressively old-school mentality (closed source everything, monolithic software, questionable terms of use, strong force in the enterprise market, etc.), which makes Mercurial look bad by association.

facebook hired most mercurial hackers, to me they are the biggest current supporter.

(and I would have cited quite a few other companies/org besides atlassian, who probably contributed as much as atlassian to the development of mercurial)