[Numpy-discussion] DVCS at PyCon

[David Cournapeau]

On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 1:43 AM, Christopher Barker
<Chris.Barker at noaa.gov> wrote:
> David Cournapeau wrote:
>>> we're really better off with a system with
>>> good tool support on all platforms.
>>
>> Why ? We are not python, where many core developers work on windows.
>
> As I understand it there is a dearth of Python developers on Windows,
> too...

Yes, but several highly visible python committers contributed a lot of
windows specific changes, or are windows users only. And a lot of
people who integrate python are windows shops. That was an argument
stated by several significant contributors against git.

Today, I think Josef is the main contributor who mostly uses windows -
there is me, too, actually :)

> But anyway, we probably want MORE Windows folks contributing, not
> fewer.

Yes, sure. But the fact is that there are not many windows developers.
And that's kind of inherent to the platform I believe. For many open
source projects which are cross-platform, there are very few windows
developers. For numpy/scipy, you almost must install mingw compilers,
all this being command line. I wish there was a developer who would
handle windows specifics for me :)

> Another key is the "core developers" concept -- I'm not a core developer
> on any major OS project, but I do contribute bits and pieces here and
> there to quite a few ( numpy, scipy, MPL, wxPython, MacPython, ... ). I
> think we want to encourage folks to be able to do that - learning a new
> VCS to test and contribute a small patch is large barrier to entry.

Yes, I agree "core developer" is a bit artificial and dangerous
concept. But for open source contribution, I think it is pretty clear
you will have to learn git. There are just so many projects which use
it now (all the freedesktop stuff, ror, gnome, perl, vlc, etc...).
Also, several people stated that they would be more willing to
contribute to numpy/scipy if it were under git. Now, granted, that's
just talk and guesses - but not more than the influence of git on
windows developers.

> Somehow, command-line anything is kind of painful on Windows, and lots
> of folks don't like using it. I'm kind of a command-line guy, but do
> most of my work on Linux or OS-X, and only use Windows when I have to,
> and then I tend to use GUI tools there -- TortoiseSVN, for instance,
> even though I use command line SVN on *nix systems.

Yes, command line on windows is not great, for various reasons. But I
think that's a good argument for svn and against *any* DVCS - because
frankly, all those GUI tools suck on windows ATM, be it hg, bzr or
git. I've just tried tortoisehg, and it is still really rough, not
really better than tortoisegit for what I can see. Heck, I find
tortoisesvn really rough, compared to things I have seen under good
IDE (I use very few GUI tools - but when I do, I expect top notch
stuff - which open source is rarely good at as far as GUI are
concerned).

David