Moving to Hg without any analysis at all

[Luke Schierer]

On Feb 7, 2011, at 19:51 EST, Ethan Blanton wrote:

> I am breaking my policy of not replying to you, and feeding the troll.
> It is a one-time thing.
> 
> Felipe Contreras spake unto us the following wisdom:
>> Last time when I criticized the move to monotone, Luke mentioned this:
>>> We spent considerable time and effort evaluating our options when we made
>>> this switch. I am a little tired of the idea that we made it relatively
>>> arbitrarily.
>> 
>> This time there was no analysis at all, there's no list of pros and
>> cons, and no list of reasons why the move to hg is desirable.
>> 
>> For posterity, the only reason you have picked hg over the
>> alternatives, is because more people voted for it. People didn't even
>> had to list a reason for their vote, or even cast it publicly.
> 
> <snip>

> This is not an eternal condemnation of git.  Some of us like it very
> much.  We simply aren't choosing to use it for day-to-day Pidgin
> development.  On top of that, most of the work done to perform an hg
> conversion is required for a git conversion, anyway, due to the fact
> that git and hg have very similar metadata deficiencies in comparison
> to mtn -- a conversion from hg to git would be easier than a
> conversion from mtn to git.
> 

A particularly telling point for me as we discussed it was looking at the availability, stability, and maturity of clients on the various platforms we used.  It was a particular area where developers seemed, to me, to express more confidence in HG, over git, at the same time expressing that this is indeed likely to be a difference between the two systems that will not persist indefinitely.  I also saw, as it was discussed, a number of developers chime in with their real life experiences with both systems, and some give and take as to which of those experiences validly reflect accurate understandings of the two.  Particularly, I saw _at least_ 4 emails responding to Felipe's ideas and concerns, including some research done by a developer in github (I think it was github) to be sure that we all had an accurate understanding of git.  

My inbox shows 30+ emails on the topic, over more than 15 days.  The topic is introduced to the mailing list in a way that makes it clear to me that the discussion in fact started, no doubt in either irc or in the muc conference room, sometime prior to that.  I see participation from most if not all of the active developers, and even a few, like myself, who are inactive but still interested.  

I cannot accept that this is in any way a hurried or arbitrary decision.   If _any_ developer, cpw, or summer of code contributor felt that there was more to be discussed, concerns not yet considered, I am equally confident that any migration would not be considered final until some sort of consensus had been reached.  

That being said, I feel like the ballot we held _is_ a valid way of determining that a consensus _has_ been reached.  The balloting happened over the mailing list, or I'd not have known about it, and the mailing list cannot in any way shape or form be considered deciding in secret or in private. 

Luke

> Ethan
> 
> P.S.  I see your comments regarding Signed-Off-By:, and using that
>      convention is a good suggestion.  It's at least a standard way
>      to work around that particular metadata deficiency.
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