Re: dVCS vs. CVS

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

David Kastrup writes:

 > So it is disingenuous to claim that Linus is not more effective while
 > using appropriate version control than when not doing so.

I didn't make that claim.  Throughout, I've admitted that better
version control can improve productivity dramatically.

 > > Now, I see no reason to believe that Emacs is lacking such discipline.
 > > The behavior of Richard, Eli, and Alan leads me to believe, on the
 > > contrary, that there is a powerful discipline here.  If so, such a
 > > discipline is a more or less fixed investment, that shows up in a
 > > reluctance to change workflow.  That reluctance is well-justified!
 > 
 > Richard is only intermittently with net access and/or time.  With
 > distributed version control, managing more than one construction site at
 > once between checkins and working with experimental code would become
 > quite easier.  Of course, in the long run we will be better off with a
 > project manager with better availability, but dVCS would at least soften
 > the impact of not being continuously available and online.

This, I claim, is wishful thinking.  The bottleneck is Richard's time
and connectivity, not the number of workspaces he has checked out
simultaneously.  He has also said he wishes Emacs had a more
continuously available maintainer, but for now he's it.  Anything that
threatens to disrupt his workflow is a threat to Emacs.

*I* agree that *in fact* git (or any of the plausible candidates) is
not a threat to his, or the project's, workflow.  All I'm trying to
do is to express that support for git (or other dVCS) in terms that
address the concerns that Richard, inter alia, has expressed.  I'm
also trying to explain to you that, AFAICS, you can tell Richard about
potential productivity gains until you're blue in the face, and he's
*still* going to ask "but, will it disrupt our workflow to convert? if
you say 'no,' why should I believe that?"