[Python-Dev] Attention Bazaar mirror users

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

"Martin v. Löwis" writes:
 > sjt sez:

 > > I didn't say "from source", I said "from a VCS checkout".  If using a
 > > *specific* recent official release of a core tool is bureaucratically
 > > infeasible, it would IMO be very unusual if you're allowed to checkout
 > > and build arbitrary versions of Python, rather than using a version
 > > provided by your bureaucrats.
 > > 
 > > The number of people whose job is *specifically* developing Python, or
 > > developing code that depends on bleeding-edge Python, in such an
 > > environment is surely very small.

 > This completely contradicts with my experience. In a university
 > environment, students regularly check out software from the source
 > repository, modify it, and build it, just to learn something by doing
 > so.

You're ignoring the second paragraph quoted above.  I'm *not* denying
that such environments are common.  The question is "Do developers
*restricted to such environments* really have an impact on Python
development to outweigh the real cost of standardizing on an older
implementation of Bazaar to developers who would be able to use a more
capable version?"  I find it hard to believe that it would be so;
Bazaar performance on a lot of measures was pretty poor in v1.5.  I
also find it hard to believe that there are very many serious
developers who only have access to a school lab or who are misusing
corporate resources to develop Python.[1]

Nor does this problem exist with Mercurial or git; both of those have
more than adequate performance for basic operations with whatever-
version-is-in-Debian-lenny (git 1.5.6 and Mercurial 1.0.1).  So I
don't see much harm to come from letting Bazaar at least put forward
its nice shiny new shoes.  Unless the Barry feels that that would be a
risk to Bazaar's acceptability in the end.  He apparently doesn't
think so, though; rather that the improved performance and
capabilities of recent bzr will make it more attractive to the great
majority of Python developers than an older (more "democratic") bzr
would be.

Besides, if Barry makes this experiment *now* and enough people speak
up that it will make it difficult for them to contribute to Python,
the Bazaar proponents can revert to an older version of Bazaar before
a final decision is made.



Footnotes: 
[1]  If it's their job to do so, and Python requires 1.12 to check
out and push to the official sources, won't their bosses push to get
the 1.12 PPA approved?  I would estimate at least 6 months lead time
before the SVN repo is decommissioned, maybe longer if it's maintained
as a mirror for a while.  That should be enough time to get *that
specific revision* (*not* arbitrary installations!) approved.