[python-committers] Survey about DVCSs compared to svn

[Fredrik Lundh]

On Fri, Feb 27, 2009 at 4:21 AM, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:

>> Right, which is what I was describing... you copy your local trunk
>> copy and then switch that copy to the new branch. If you use cp -al
>> for this, that's a very fast operation on Unixes and avoids
>> most of the network traffic.
>
> What cp are you talking about, the command or svn cp? Either way the help
> for both commands don't list -a or -l as flags on OS X under their help.

$ cp --help
...
Copy SOURCE to DEST, or multiple SOURCE(s) to DIRECTORY.
...
Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.
  -a, --archive                same as -dpR
...
  -l, --link                   link files instead of copying

Sounds like you need to upgrade to a real OS ;-)

> The DVCS switch is not about us (at least not entirely). It's about the
> people who want to help out but have not earned checking rights. It's about
> giving them the best tools available to empower them to contribute to Python
> in the easiest, best way possible.

So the hypothetical requirements of one hypothetical developer is
reason enough for breaking the current process for *everyone*,
including core developers and non-development repository users (see my
earlier mail)?  Given that all major DVCS:es seem to have solid
support for *pulling* from an SVN master repository (and at least Git
makes it easy to commit too), why not just let developers to use
whatever tools they want when working on individual features, as long
as they can provide a straightforward patch (or commit) at the end?

</F>