Monotone analysis

[Felipe Contreras]

On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 6:03 AM, John Bailey <rekkanoryo at rekkanoryo.org> wrote:
> Felipe Contreras wrote:
>> I would like to hear another theory about why nobody is using it.
>
> I personally don't care why "nobody" (according to you) is using it.  It works
> for us.  End of story.

http://www.venge.net/mtn-wiki/ProjectsUsingMonotone
That list is rather small, with only two important projects there;
Pidgin and OpenEmbedded.

If you want to say that's an impressive portfolio then fine, for me
that's essentially nobody.

>> 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.
>
> I've yet to need a diagram to follow any of our branches.  It's not difficult.
> If it's difficult for you, that's not our problem.

Compare these:
http://developer.pidgin.im/viewmtn/revision/info/99fe11b8da675f3b74b853ea29a16d8c9564cb95
http://gitweb.freedesktop.org/?p=xorg/xserver.git;a=commit;h=26c1958c322be3ac4dfec9ba2c41c5202bd03709
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~people-project/people-project/people-trunk/revision/314

See the difference? Only the mtn one has a diagram. That's because
when you have a single head per branch you don't need them. The name
of the commit is enough to know what's happening (merge from
'atombios').

>> 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.
>
> Tools can suck, yes.  No one is debating that.  In this case, my opinion is that
> your understanding of monotone isn't even described by "sucks".

I've done my best to understand it, I don't think I need to go deeper,
I already see many flaws.

I've been told that I don't understand mtn, but nobody has told me
why. My bet is that because of a few non-relevant misconceptions you
want to throw away all my criticism.

> I'll state this as simply as I can:
>
> Monotone meets our needs and is easily extended for future needs.
> Micro-branches work for us--we understand them and can actually use them
> effectively.  We made the decision to use monotone long ago, when you were still
> off somewhere ignoring us.  We aren't changing our minds just because you think
> we made the wrong choice.  Ever since you showed back up and started msn-pecan
> all I've seen out of you are either announcements for new releases of msn-pecan
> or posts bitching about monotone.

I've made many suggestions, sent patches, pointed out bugs, and helped
people in irc regarding msn issues.

Instead of gratitude I only received insults, skepticism about every
of my moves. If you apply one of my patches or fix a bug I pointed out
are you making me a favor?

It's really hard to contribute when nothing I do is ever ok.

> We get the point that you don't like monotone.  We also get the point that you
> think we were wrong for choosing it.  I don't care.  If you can't live with us
> using the tools of our choice, or at least not bitch about it every five
> minutes, then I think you need to get the hell out of Dodge.
>
> The *only* reason I'm reacting so strongly to your bitching about monotone is
> that you're doing nothing but wasting our time and bandwidth for garbage we've
> already said "We don't care" to more times than I can count.  Apparently we were
> too subtle in saying this previously, so there it is in its simplest possible form.

You can say it as many times as you want it doesn't make it true. Luke
already accepted that he didn't run git-repack, and you still argue as
if you did a good job at evaluating git; it was written in the
tutorial, a visit at #git asking 'why is my repo so huge?', or a post
in the mailing list would have pointed out git-repack.

In any case, I've seen other developers considering the move, I think
you should talk for yourself when you say 'we are not going to switch,
period'.

-- 
Felipe Contreras