Project maturity and developer effort (was: [RFC] branch --bind)

[Ben Finney]

Algis Kabaila <akabaila at pcug.org.au> writes:

> I switched to bazaar quite innocently after I read a few documents - I
> liked the style and thought the high standard of presentation meant
> that I was taking up the use of a mature versioning tool. Some threads
> convinced me otherwise.

If any distributed VCS can be called “mature”, I think Bazaar clearly
qualifies.

It is a matter of fact that Bazaar is one of the earliest, with a pretty
direct ancestry back to the original free-software DVCS: the Arch
system, now defunct. I think Bazaar, more than most, has benefited from
this ancestry by keeping the good and discarding the bad in its
architecture and design.

The distributed VCS concept is young. It's to be expected that any such
system that is healthy will have a developer community engaged in
ongoing discussions about how to proceed on various issues. If any such
project were *not* having such vigorous discussion, that would indicate
not a mature project, but a moribund one.

> However, the ability of threads similar to this to absorb subscribers
> time and energy, even without contributing to it is such that I feel
> very disappointed with myself for having moved to bazaar. I feel great
> urge to quit bazaar for good.

What is it about discussions like this that make you want to quit using
Bazaar?

As I alluded to above, I find these discussions healthy and necessary
for a project's long-term survival, even though I don't follow most of
them myself.

I would be far more concerned by a project that does *not* have these
discussions, or has them away from open forums like this one.

I also think the dichotomy you imply is a false one: Just because people
are putting time and energy into a particular discussion, does not at
all mean that the time and energy would become available for your
preferred activity in the absence of that discussion.

> For an ordinary user, such as I, it is a great disappointment that the
> *documentation*, which definitely needs updating, remains in the same
> state of completion

The last six months has seen a great deal of progress on the Bazaar
documentation, discussed here in many of the same kind of threads that
take a lot of developer effort and time.

If that progress isn't visible to you as a Bazaar user, that may
indicate a failing to communicate the progress effectively. I can
certainly appreciate that would be frustrating. Perhaps some of
those working on the documentation can highlight that progress in
response to this thread.

-- 
 \           “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their |
  `\     home.” —Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital |
_o__)                                            Equipment Corp., 1977 |
Ben Finney