[Python-Dev] Looking for VCS usage scenarios (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Wed Nov 5 22:31:18 CET 2008

Paul Moore wrote:

2008/11/5 Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org>:

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On Nov 5, 2008, at 6:09 AM, Paul Moore wrote:

I'll freely admit a (not very) hidden bias here - the slowness of an initial clone (or going through the "download a shared repo, unpack it, create a branch and update" rigmarole) makes this a nasty test for Bazaar. But I do nevertheless think it's an important use case, as it's all about encouraging casual users to contribute. One thing that we're not taking advantage of on code.python.org for Bazaar is "stacked branches". This is basically an indirection technique that doesn't require a full revision history download to get started. Stacked branches greatly improve performance for the initial pull and push, and reduces disk usage on the server. While that would be good, my understanding is that stacked branches in Bazaar only work (for history operations) while you're online. So they make Bazaar work a little like a centralised VCS, I guess. Not sure how that's a step forward :-)

You only need full history in order to ask "how did this code get to this state" type questions. That's something a core dev will occasionally want to know (which is why we would take to the time to setup a full checkout no matter how long it takes), but utterly irrelevant to a casual committer such as the one in your "write and submit a quick patch" scenario.

Also, the DVCSs shouldn't be compared just against each other - we need the benchmark numbers against the current SVN repository as well.

Cheers, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan at gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia

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