Monotone analysis

[Felipe Contreras]

On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 2:34 AM, John Bailey <rekkanoryo at rekkanoryo.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 02:02:16AM +0300, Felipe Contreras wrote:
>> 2008/7/9 John Bailey <rekkanoryo at rekkanoryo.org>:
>> You can achieve with temporal/topic/local branches what you can
>> achieve with microbranches, except that you have control over what's
>> happening.
>
> I can control what happens in a microbranch just as well as any git,
> bzr, or hg user can with their branches.

You can't decide to drop a commit that somebody else already did, like
an applied patch.

You can't cleanup the commits somebody else did in his branch before
integrating it into your branch.

You can't cherry pick commits from a remote branch.

In mtn is all or nothing.

>> Git/bzr/hg provide better tools to manage the divergence: cheap branches.
>
> And monotone branches aren't cheap?  Seriously, what are you smoking?

I have 18 branches in msn-pecan. 12 local and 6 remote. I can
reorganize the commits as much as I want locally, move the commits
from one branch to another, and then push to the remote branches,
nobody has to notice I have local branches. When I'm done I can remove
both the local and the remote branches.

Adding and removing branches is cheap because a branch is simply a
reference to a commit. Creating a branch is creating a one line file,
and removing the file removes the branch.

In mtn, creating a branch means to add a cert to each and every commit
in the branch, while that is not too bad once created, you can't
remove it. So you must be careful when you create a branch; it's not
cheap.

>> Of course MTN isn't hard to use once you get used to it, CVS wasn't
>> either, but once you get used to something superior, you can't go back
>> to the madnes. Would you do serious development in CVS again? Even if
>> a project you want to contribute to is using it and they see no reason
>> to change?
>
> Yes, I would.  CVS may suck, but it does what it does in a predictable
> and well-known fashion.  I do, in fact, still use CVS on occasion.

on occasion != serious development.

>> There's a reason why nobody is using mtn: it's not ok.
>
> And again you spout an _opinion_ that you haven't supported with any
> real, irrefutable evidence.  If you want to bitch about monotone, go
> bitch to its developers.  I'm tired of seeing your complaints about our
> decision on what tool to use.  If you can't handle that, tough.

I would like to hear another theory about why nobody is using it.

Fortunately I don't have to work with such a horrid tool where it's
impossible to follow what's happening on a single branch without a
diagram, let alone the whole project.

And by the way, I don't see why you react so passionately about
criticism to the DSCM you are using. It's just a tool, tools can suck.

-- 
Felipe Contreras