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GNU Emacs Switches From CVS To Bazaar

kfogel writes "GNU Emacs, one of the oldest continuously developed free software projects around, has switched from CVS to Bazaar. Emacs's first recorded version-control commits date from August, 1985. Eight years later, in 1993, it moved to CVS. Sixteen years later, it is switching to Bazaar, its first time in a decentralized version control system. If this pattern holds, GNU Emacs will be in Bazaar for at least thirty-two years ..."

8 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. Why 32? by hezekiah957 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    24 is plausible, too; an arithmetic not geometric progression.

    1. Re:Why 32? by mpeskett · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Let's not forget insightful-popular, insightful-contrarian and insightful-'said they expect to be downmodded'

  2. Re:32 years? by kfogel · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I've used both and don't agree. Bazaar's quite good. Not that there's anything wrong with git, either. At this point in their development, I think the old rule is starting to apply: "the smaller the differences, the louder the arguments".

    --
    http://www.red-bean.com/kfogel
  3. Re:first first? by melikamp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    (defun search-dupe-words ()
    "Search for word dupes"
    (interactive)
    (search-forward-regexp "[^a-z]\\([a-z]+\\) \\1[^a-z]"))

    (global-set-key (kbd "<f7>") 'search-dupe-words)

  4. Re:what's new?; bazaar versus git by Hurricane78 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As Linus explained, the “easier” argument is gone, since they did put really hard work into git’s user interface. They knew that it was bad. And what was the normal interface back then, is now the low-level interface, with a whole new, nice interface on top. (But you can still use the low-level one, when you need it.)

    Anyway, maybe it’s me, but I don’t see “easy” per se as a advantage. I prefer efficiency. And more often than I like it, easiness seems to mean less efficiency.
    It’s like “Those who give up some efficiency for a little easiness, deserve neither”. ^^
    Of course the same is true for too (pointlessly) complicated interfaces too. (Main examples: Emacs and VI.)

    The problem is, that most programmers seem to see that level of complexity as static. But it has to adapt to the user, over time. Rise when in need, fall when not. Stepless, if possible.
    Instead they think in absolute, black and white, one-dimensional spaces: Either Notepad with Clippy, or Emacs/VM.
    It’s so stupid.

    To me, git is a tool that is pretty nice in that aspect.
    Simple committing and version management for yourself is very easy.
    But if you want to do crazy stuff, like go back 10 versions, patch that one with eight other forks, wrap it, and the next five versions, into one version, and put that thing not only back into your repository, but into that of others too... then it doesn’t leave you in the rain, but gives you the tools to do it.

    --
    Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
  5. Re:what's new?; bazaar versus git by JanneM · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Anyway, maybe it's me, but I don't see "easy" per se as a advantage. I prefer efficiency. And more often than I like it, easiness seems to mean less efficiency."

    And sometimes it means more.

    The main issue with the interfaces to systems like emacs, or LaTeX or git (the old one; the current interface is not bad) is that they are only really efficient if you use the tools all the time. If you use emacs all day, every day then the interface is probably fine. I constantly use LaTeX and so it's really much more effective for me than a graphical typesetting-type application. If all your software lives in git repos and you work with them most days of the week then it soon becomes second nature.

    But many people don't use their tools every day. I'd say that every single one of us have some tools that we do use and do like, but we simply don't need them every day or even every week. And when you're an occasional user, no matter how "power" you are, the kind of cryptic interfaces these tools have become a hindrance, not a help. The UI is not discoverable - it's not clear how to do things you may want - so when you don't use it all the time you forget how to do even simple, common tasks.

    You end up spending your time searching the web or grep:ing your own shell history to remind yourself how you do stuff, and the efficiency goes straight out the window.

    "So use it more often" isn't an answer. These are tools, not something you use just for their own sake. If you don't need to, say, write a report more than once every three months then you're certainly not going to create the occasional bogus document just so you don't forget how to do things in LaTeX.

    So depending on the task, more than on the user, these interfaces can be a help or a major hindrance.

    --
    Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
  6. Re:first first? by thestuckmud · · Score: 3, Insightful
    This `\<\(\w+\) \1\>' regexp matches identical word pairs using word related capabilities built into emacs' regexps (and relative to the local syntax table).

    For OP: The key sequence you are looking for is:
    <C-M\>s\<\(\w+\) \1\>

  7. Re:32 years? by gmack · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Git is written in C by people with experience doing complicated things very quickly(kernel programmers).

    Bazaar is written in python.