Promoting the use of Mercurial; was: Re: gnome dvcs survey results

[Matt Mackall]

On Wed, 2009-01-07 at 13:33 -0500, Theodore Tso wrote:
> Hg can make a counterargument with the latter, based on the
> fact that python is a easier language to write extensions than C.
> (OTOH, I personally find it easier to write extensions using shell and
> the low-level git functions but that's because I never got around to
> learning python, but am much more of a shell/sed/awk/perl kind of guy.
> Everybody's mileage will vary here...)

This argument always puzzles me. You can certainly write an 'extension'
as a shell script today in Mercurial, you'll just have to name it hg-foo
rather than 'hg foo'. And, just like git, it'll have to go through other
built-in commands to do its job. Nor will it have any help with argument
parsing, online help, etc. Extending our extension support so that we
can make arbitrary commands work as 'hg foo' is something nobody but you
has ever even hinted at.

> Note, BTW, that the other momentum argument is simply number of
> developers and relative activity on the mailing list.  The git mailing
> list averages about 2900 messages/month; mercurial seems to be
> averaging about 470 messages/month.  If there are more people working
> on making a project better, all other things being equal, it's a good
> thing --- although obviously a few star programmers can make a huge
> difference either way.

This of course begs the question: why does git still suck? If they have
six times the people power, you'd think that over the last 3 years they
would have pulled so far ahead in quality that hg and bzr wouldn't even
be on people's radars. But git's kluge-ness is deeply embedded in its
DNA and evolving away from that is apparently going to take geological
time. 

Similarly, bzr: they've got multiple paid developers and had a head
start.

-- 
Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.