RE: [Axiom-developer] revision control chaos

[Bill Page]

On May 20, 2007 7:37 PM Simon Michael wrote:
> 
> this is just an outsider's comment. I've been following the 
> list for a while.
> 
> I am amazed that the Axiom project is still fiddling around 
> with so many revision control systems (arch, cvs, svn, git at
> last count).

Actually Simon, you forgot both darcs and mercurial. We have had
mirrors of the SVN build-improvements branch in these formats
for more than a year and the first windows version of Axiom was
distributed that way since no one seemed to be able to get tla
to work reliably on Windows.

> No successful free software project does this. Chaos is the
> practically inevitable result.

I agree that it would be chaos if Axiom had a reasonable number
of committers but as it stands it is really only rather pathetic.
:-(

> 
> I think adopting Git was a great move - bravo! All you need 
> do now is pull the plug on all arch, cvs and svn repos and go
> forward.

I agree and also I should say: "Well said!" considering that the
ZWiki project choose darcs a couple of years ago. In my opinion
darcs is still superior to Git, Hg and the other distributed
archive systems and I have long been very disappointed that none
of the other Axiom developers saw it this way. But at least Git
is better late rather than never.

> 
> "Ordinary mortals" are using the modern distributed revision
> control systems by now. (And if they're not, they are a drag
> on the project you can't afford.)

Actually I think we can afford a little drag. Axiom is more like
a big old steam engine than a new fangled airplane, since it just
keeps on going and is starting to look pretty good these days since
it uses only renewable resources ... For some reason this image
always seems to come to my mind when Tim Daly makes reference to
Axiom's "30 year horizon" :-)

> 
> Thanks for listening, and thank you for Axiom!
> 

I'll second that!

Regards,
Bill Page.