Fwd: [Python-Dev] Primer on distributed revision control?

[Russel Winder]

Ian,

On Wed, 2008-03-26 at 18:37 +1000, Ian Clatworthy wrote:

> Thanks for the explicit feedback. I'm not going to pretend it's easy
> balancing the needs of different audiences, so it great to have readers
> articulate how the docs can be made better for them. Huge numbers of
> developers still don't "get" DVCS. The Bazaar User Guide is almost too
> terse for them, while it's overkill for those deeply familiar with
> numerous DVCS tools/patterns. Different books are really needed down the
> track. In the meantime, the User Guide is trying to find the right
> middle ground.

I am not sure you actually need two books here, I think you can do with
only one, but some careful curriculum and pedagogy is needed to avoid
boring people who get DVCS and yet not losing those who don't.  I think
you really do need a physical book as well as online documentation -- is
anyone doing an O'Reilly, Manning, or Pragmatic Programmer's book on
Bazaar?

Articles such as the one you wrote, and the ones Steve Love wrote, in
CVu (for the bulk of the list: CVu is one of the magazines put out by
ACCU -- http://www.accu.org) help, but I think semi-tutorial style
sessions at conferences (<plug>hence the session Jim Hague and myself
are doing at ACCU 2008, Firday 2008-04-04 16:00+00:00 </plug>) are the
fastest way to bring people into the DVCS fold.  A Good Book also helps
-- having two or three books on Bazaar on the bookseller stands at
conferences is the best way of doing deep marketing.

Another "angle" is to show how to use DVCS as a way of working with CVCS
-- in this case Subversion at the centre and Bazaar and Git at the
leaves.  ( NB  Mercurial still has problems with this scenario I
believe, which is good for Bazaar :-)  This means bzr-svn is critical!
However, despite the complexity of Git, I find its interaction with
Subversion to be a little less intrusive than that of Bazaar.  I know it
is trivial in the grand scheme of things but the fact that Git commit
message in Subversion are indistinguishable from Subversion commits
(whereas Bazaar commits are very clearly Bazaar commits) is actually a
big win for Git.

Back to the main point though, when are the book(s) on Bazaar going to
be on the bookshelves?

-- 
Russel.
====================================================
Dr Russel Winder                 Partner

Concertant LLP                   t: +44 20 7193 9203
41 Buckmaster Road,              f: +44 8700 516 084
London SW11 1EN, UK.             m: +44 7770 465 077
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/bazaar/attachments/20080326/92e56b7a/attachment-0001.pgp