Introduction to Ubuntu Distributed Development

[James Westby]

On Thu Dec 17 12:15:28 +0000 2009 Patrick Goetz wrote:
> > Subject: Introduction to Ubuntu Distributed Development
> > From: James Westby <jw+debian at jameswestby.net>
> > Date: Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:40:34 +0000
> > To: ubuntu-devel <ubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com>
> >
> > The TL;DR version:
> > 
> >   1) Version Control rocks.
> >   2) Distributed version control rocks even more.
> >   3) Bazaar rocks particularly well.
> >   4) Let's use Bazaar for Ubuntu.
> > 
> 
> There's no question that distributed version control rocks, but I'm 
> wondering what drove the decision to develop/maintain bazaar?  We've 
> been using Mercurial to good effect (http://mercurial.selenic.com/) -- 
> awesome, easy to use GPL product with superb graphical change tracking 
> features, and there's always git for the purest of the pure.
> 
> Given the chronic shortage of developers to work on various things, it 
> seems imprudent to devote resources to re-inventing the wheel...

It's not reinventing the wheel, Bazaar predates both of the systems that
you mention. It also has different features and a different philosophy,
so it's not a straight switch. Added to this is all the existing
infrastructure and tools that we have, which would be highly non-trivial
to port, and the fact that the bzr team are keen to add features that
work better for us. A change would not be as easy as you seem to suggest,
and I don't even think it would be the right thing to do even if it was.

Thanks,

James