Short, task-based bzr doclets for real-world use cases.

[Paul Moore]

2009/1/16 Russel Winder <russel.winder at concertant.com>:
> Paul,
>
> On Fri, 2009-01-16 at 09:56 +0000, Paul Moore wrote:
>
>> I'm not an expert, just a lurker who worked a bit with bzr but then
>> found Mercurial more to his taste. But some of my reasons *why* I did
> [ . . . ]
>
> Is it possible to summarize what is was that made you feel more
> comfortable with Mercurial rather than Bazaar?

Roughly, and in no particular order:

1. Things just worked as I expected with Mercurial (basically, what I said here)
2. Speed (and the constraints I had to accept on how I worked in order
to get it - specifically, using a repository forces me to structure my
directories in a certain way, or jump through frankly silly hoops with
shallow checkouts)
3. (No longer valid, I believe) problems with bzr-svn memory usage on Windows
4. Nothing specific, but general confusion over formats, options, etc
- again, more or less what Karl is getting at

And overall (and I don't mean to offend anyone by this!) a feeling
that the developers were heading in a direction which didn't address
the problems that bothered me. I'll give 2 examples here, but please
don't think they are huge gripes - just indications of why I got the
impression I did:

* As I mentioned, speed matters to me, and specifically, speed of
local branching when *not* using a shared repository (my often-quoted
example is branching the Python repository). While development is
ongoing on improving speed, I get the impression that this isn't a use
case that many people car about.
* The ongoing introduction of new formats - over and over again we
have seen complaints that "Bazaar has too many formats". I know the
arguments that "most of the time nobody should care or be aware of the
extra formats", but bluntly, people *are*, and yet still more are
being introduced.

(Please don't spend time trying to convince me I'm wrong over these 2
- not because I don't appreciate the effort, but because they are
relatively minor to me, and only indicative anyway. Also, both items
have been discussed to death in the past, and yet the impressions
still persist "out there").

I hope this helps.

Paul.

PS I haven't included things I like about Mercurial, as I doubt that
would help much, and I don't want to make this sound like a "my DVCS
is better than yours" post.