Re: [Chicken-users] Subversion support misguided IMHO

[Brandon J. Van Every]

felix winkelmann wrote:
> On 1/8/07, Peter Busser <address@hidden> wrote:
> > > Found it:
> > > http://progetti.arstecnica.it/tailor
> > > http://darcs.net/DarcsWiki/Tailor
> > > Now, how mature should I believe it to be?
> >
> > It's just an apt-get install away, so why don't you just give it a 
> > try and
> > tell us what you think about it?

It's written in Python, so I did download it to my Windows 2000 primary 
development box, and I looked at the README.

> > From my own experience with tailor, I'd say it's not ready yet.
> I tried to convert a darcs repo to mercurial without success. The
> documentation is relatively sparse, so it's possible that I made
> some mistake.

What does Tailor need to be "ready for?"

I don't think Peter is asking for two-way Darcs <--> Mercurial or Darcs 
<--> Subversion synchronization.  That would be suicide even if it all 
worked perfectly.  For our current size of project, core development 
with 2 version control systems + a glue program is pointless 
complication.  Anyone doing enough core development to warrant it, is 
serious enough to either learn the very few Darcs commands they need, 
obtain a working Darcs for their marginal platform despite GHC 
difficulties, work around the difficulties by cross-compiling or sharing 
a file volume from another OS that actually has Darcs, or put the energy 
into evaluating and migrating us to Mercurial. 

I think Peter is asking for faster one-way Darcs --> Subversion 
mirroring, so that platforms without Darcs can get a more accurate 
read-only dump of the source pool.  Perhaps Tailor can help with that.  
I don't know what the current mechanism is; it sounds like it is not 
automated.  Peter could dig into that if he wants, whatever the best 
solution is.  I'm sure we could set him up with the needed permissions 
and administrative contacts.

I'd rather just have people dealing with Darcs.  But I recognize the 
fact that Darcs can't reach everywhere, and I always value people 
getting "on board" with Chicken in some way, above and beyond any other 
concern.  Recruitment and assigned responsibility is how a project 
grows.  The people that actually do the work, get to pick the tools 
IMO.  Provided it doesn't train wreck everyone else, of course.  I don't 
see any technical risk in fiddling with Darcs --> Subversion mirroring, 
even if it doesn't fit my social agenda.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every