Brief article on benchmarks of Python repository with leading DVCSen

[David Cournapeau]

Nicholas Allen wrote:
> It looks like they didn't use a shared repository in Bazaar so perhaps
> the results are not that meaningful. Even so I don't think Bazaar
> performed badly - it outdid subversion on all the tests and users are
> ok with subversion's performance.
>
> I think the time Bazaar saves me with its proper support for renaming
> and merging is far more significant than a few seconds performing not
> so frequent commands. The time I spend developing is much greater than
> the time I spend waiting for Bazaar so it's not really a big issue for
> me. Of course, I would welcome any speed improvements!

It does depend on your workflow. When you are working with a svn
repository which is far away (in terms of connection speed), I find svn
extremely slow when working with branches. Branching/merging easily
takes several minutes, for example. And you have to wait at this point,
because it is so easy to make mistakes during branch managements. When
people say as fast as svn is good enough, I think it is only true when
you have good connection, and use the basic commands. Many things are
way too slow in svn: people just do not use them often or at all (log
between branches, blame).

There is also a problem with "I am spending more time coding than
waiting for bzr", I think: generally, spending time with your DVCS is a
waste of time, it is just bureaucracy. There is a psychological effect,
too; after two years of bzr usage, I went to git. Now, when I am going
back to bzr, I am always reminded that I am using bzr, because I have to
wait for almost every operations; git, on the other hand, always give me
the result immediately, I just don't think about it, like I don't think
about ls, cd, etc...

The fast enough does not fly if you don't do everything else much better
- bzr advantages do not always outweigh its slowness. And while bzr
speed improves, do not forget that other projects improve as well. Git,
for example, became much more usable IMHO (at least on unix): it went
from "what the heck is this" 2-3 years ago to "wow, git is so much
better than bzr" in *my* case. Other people I know made this argument of
"bzr is fast/good enough", now use git and would not go back;
admittedly, it is a very skewed population (open source enthusiasts who
do not mind/can waste a few hours learning a new tool). But that's a
population which matters a lot for an open source software.

cheers,

David