11 ms·

Welcome, New Emacs Developers

195 points by deng 12y ago

brianpgordon 12y ago
> Emacs switched the version control system from Bazaar to git yesterday If you haven't followed the drama, here's ESR's take: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2014-01/msg00005.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2014-01/msg00...
- bitwize 12y ago
  Eric also lent considerable aid and the use of his reposurgeon tool to doing the actual migration. Despite his storied rivalry with Stallman, the two actually worked together over the past 10 months to get this shit done.
- nekopa 12y ago
  Jesus Christ, (and I say that as a Buddhist) thanks for that rabbit hole. Thanks. I have spent 45 minutes so far on it, and it just keeps getting deeper. If I had enough karma I would downvote you for effectivly killing my evening, but as I don't I upvoted you instead in the hope that you will read my message and think twice in the future about posting such a fascinating, interesting time sink that will kill people's productivity. Cheers
  - mistermumble 12y ago
    ESR's post provides a link to a long but worthwhile article by Jelmer Vernooij on the history of Bazaar and why it lost to Git. The key paragraph: We lost sight of what mattered for our users, focusing on features that were nice but perhaps not as necessary as we thought. We overengineered. We didn't get rid of the crufty unnecessary features. It's harder to comprehend, contribute to or fix performance issues in a large layered codebase. And the larger a codebase becomes, the larger the surface for bugs, the harder it is to refactor. https://www.stationary-traveller.eu/pages/bzr-a-retrospective.html https://www.stationary-traveller.eu/pages/bzr-a-retrospectiv...
    - cbd1984 12y ago
      The link appears down (hostname doesn't resolve for me): http://web.archive.org/web/20141108100240/https://www.stationary-traveller.eu/pages/bzr-a-retrospective.html http://web.archive.org/web/20141108100240/https://www.statio... % host www.stationary-traveller.eu Host www.stationary-traveller.eu not found: 2(SERVFAIL) (In case that helps someone.) In fact, I think I have something, because dig www.stationary-traveller.eu +trace seems to work: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12025173/dig-returns-servfail-but-trace-works http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12025173/dig-returns-serv... My resolv.conf is just 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 so I'm pretty sure this is affecting others. OpenDNS resolves it, though: % nslookup www.stationary-traveller.eu 208.67.222.222 Server: 208.67.222.222 Address: 208.67.222.222#53 Non-authoritative answer: www.stationary-traveller.eu canonical name = aurelia.vernstok.nl. aurelia.vernstok.nl canonical name = aurelia.jelmer.uk. Name: aurelia.jelmer.uk Address: 178.63.244.14 This might provide a solution: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1278335 http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1278335 > EDIT,fixed: The CAUSE was that /etc/named.conf had no zone set for that domain. and also there was file for "DB record" missing in /var/named/domain.com.db file. This manual fixed it: http://kb.iweb.com/entries/21155058-Adding-new-domains-to-DNS-servers-from-the-shell http://kb.iweb.com/entries/21155058-Adding-new-domains-to-DN...
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  Is this : " It impedes people stuck on old (low spec) computers, too. For example, in my adventures w/ git-bzr, i have managed to do the initial clone, but 512M RAM is not enough to achieve the tantalizingly compact footprint that "git gc --aggressive" purports. I'm a stubborn fool and will find a way eventually (suggestions from git-bzr / git experts welcome!), but it's an unqualified slog that i imagine is just not worth the trouble for others in similar straits." just ideology? I would have expected most individuals in position to be doing development work in 2014 to have a little more ram than this.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    Development work in the richer countries, yes. In the not so rich countries 1G is still quite normal and a program that's conservative (if using 512M can be called conservative in this case) with RAM is to be appreciated at all times, even when you have lots of it.
cwyers 12y ago
"Emacs: The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread If It Wasn’t For The Fact That Emacs Was Actually Invented Before Sliced Bread." That's gold.
- SeoxyS 12y ago
  Well, it would be, if it were true. I'm pretty sure Emacs was invented after 1928. Half a century later, actually. I found that claim really odd. Maybe there's a joke or reference in there I'm not getting? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliced_bread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliced_bread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs
  - fafner 12y ago
    It's simply a joke about Emacs having a long history. Don't take it too seriously. Just like the "greatest thing since sliced bread" phrase. I mean sliced bread is not great at all.
    - vkjv 12y ago
      You've clearly not had to make a sandwich with bread that isn't sliced. Sliced bread is amazing.
      - fafner 12y ago
        I rarely buy sliced bread. But then again I usually buy real bread and not that "toast"-thing, which seems to be mislabelled as "bread" in the anglosphere.
        broodbucket 12y ago
        I can't believe I'm witnessing a bread elitist. Bread, of all things. Not knocking your opinion as I will admit to being a bread plebeian, but wow.
        12y ago
naner 12y ago
This sort of thing is very important. One of the (many) issues that hinders open source projects is that it is difficult to jump into the code, even for experienced developers. Every project can benefit by making contributing easy and building as quick and painless as possible. I still remember a couple years ago I wanted to contribute to Chromium. I took one look at the build instructions and decided I didn't want to contribute that badly...
GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
This will be an interesting test to see if the claim 'emacs development was held back because of it's VCS' actually holds.
- aaronem 12y ago
  I doubt that was the only barrier.
  - broodbucket 12y ago
    It's not the only barrier but it is a barrier. I never would've considered contributing to Emacs but now I might if I have free time.
to3m 12y ago
I had a patch to emacs accepted about a year ago and I just used the previous git mirror for everything. esr's apparent attempts to get everybody to move to git are a little quixotic, I have to say - but if it happens, it's probably a good thing. Where a DVCS is a good fit, then you might as well use git. But even while I support this move and assume workflow will be improved for emacs regulars, I wonder whether it will prove so valuable for occasional contributors. (N.B., I'm English, so I guess what I mean is: I don't believe that this will make much difference.) I've now seen a couple of attempts to frame this change that way and I'm not sure I buy it.
- fafner 12y ago
  bzr is a DVCS. But anyway: bzr has simply become a barrier. Not only to attract new developers but also some long term contributors have ceased contributions because they considered bzr to be too much of a hassle. But it's not only that git has simply become the vcs everybody knows. Bazaar development has stopped and it's in "maintenance mode", which sadly means that some bugs aren't getting fixed. Switching to git therefore made sense from several perspectives.
  - deng 12y ago
    > but also some long term contributors have ceased contributions because they considered bzr to be too much of a hassle I wonder who those could be. I can't remember any major contributor leaving because of bzr.
    - fafner 12y ago
      E.g., * John Wiegley, author of eshell and other things. * The ada-mode was moved to GNU elpa because the maintainer didn't want to work with bzr.
  - to3m 12y ago
    Yes, bzr is a DVCS. And when a DVCS is a good fit, you might as well use git! Which is what they're doing. My point wasn't that switching to git isn't a good idea, just that my guess would be that out of all the reasons why people might not contribute to emacs development the VCS in use is not a huge factor. But, I myself used the git mirror rather than bother with bzr. And this certainly is giving emacs some publicity, which (as I understand it) is always a good thing. And if it's being spun as some kind of a push to be friendlier to new developers, mabye the whole exercise will indeed prove more significant than I expect? Anyway, fortunately we are now in a position to test my theory, one way or the other ;)
victorr 12y ago
Does Vim have a source repository like this? I could only find https://code.google.com/p/vim/ https://code.google.com/p/vim/ , but there are only 3 contributors
- thristian 12y ago
  That's the official Vim repository, yes. There are a lot of contributors to Vim, but for consistency with the way Vim patches were handled before it had an SCM, changes are sent as diffs to the mailing-list and manually committed by Bram, rather than just being slurped into the repository with the original author information intact.
- Arkanosis 12y ago
  Yes: http://www.vim.org/mercurial.php http://www.vim.org/mercurial.php

195 points by deng 12y ago

> Emacs switched the version control system from Bazaar to git yesterday If you haven't followed the drama, here's ESR's take: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2014-01/msg00005.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2014-01/msg00...

bitwize 12y ago
Eric also lent considerable aid and the use of his reposurgeon tool to doing the actual migration. Despite his storied rivalry with Stallman, the two actually worked together over the past 10 months to get this shit done.
nekopa 12y ago
Jesus Christ, (and I say that as a Buddhist) thanks for that rabbit hole. Thanks. I have spent 45 minutes so far on it, and it just keeps getting deeper. If I had enough karma I would downvote you for effectivly killing my evening, but as I don't I upvoted you instead in the hope that you will read my message and think twice in the future about posting such a fascinating, interesting time sink that will kill people's productivity. Cheers
- mistermumble 12y ago
  ESR's post provides a link to a long but worthwhile article by Jelmer Vernooij on the history of Bazaar and why it lost to Git. The key paragraph: We lost sight of what mattered for our users, focusing on features that were nice but perhaps not as necessary as we thought. We overengineered. We didn't get rid of the crufty unnecessary features. It's harder to comprehend, contribute to or fix performance issues in a large layered codebase. And the larger a codebase becomes, the larger the surface for bugs, the harder it is to refactor. https://www.stationary-traveller.eu/pages/bzr-a-retrospective.html https://www.stationary-traveller.eu/pages/bzr-a-retrospectiv...
  - cbd1984 12y ago
    The link appears down (hostname doesn't resolve for me): http://web.archive.org/web/20141108100240/https://www.stationary-traveller.eu/pages/bzr-a-retrospective.html http://web.archive.org/web/20141108100240/https://www.statio... % host www.stationary-traveller.eu Host www.stationary-traveller.eu not found: 2(SERVFAIL) (In case that helps someone.) In fact, I think I have something, because dig www.stationary-traveller.eu +trace seems to work: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12025173/dig-returns-servfail-but-trace-works http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12025173/dig-returns-serv... My resolv.conf is just 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 so I'm pretty sure this is affecting others. OpenDNS resolves it, though: % nslookup www.stationary-traveller.eu 208.67.222.222 Server: 208.67.222.222 Address: 208.67.222.222#53 Non-authoritative answer: www.stationary-traveller.eu canonical name = aurelia.vernstok.nl. aurelia.vernstok.nl canonical name = aurelia.jelmer.uk. Name: aurelia.jelmer.uk Address: 178.63.244.14 This might provide a solution: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1278335 http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1278335 > EDIT,fixed: The CAUSE was that /etc/named.conf had no zone set for that domain. and also there was file for "DB record" missing in /var/named/domain.com.db file. This manual fixed it: http://kb.iweb.com/entries/21155058-Adding-new-domains-to-DNS-servers-from-the-shell http://kb.iweb.com/entries/21155058-Adding-new-domains-to-DN...
GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
Is this : " It impedes people stuck on old (low spec) computers, too. For example, in my adventures w/ git-bzr, i have managed to do the initial clone, but 512M RAM is not enough to achieve the tantalizingly compact footprint that "git gc --aggressive" purports. I'm a stubborn fool and will find a way eventually (suggestions from git-bzr / git experts welcome!), but it's an unqualified slog that i imagine is just not worth the trouble for others in similar straits." just ideology? I would have expected most individuals in position to be doing development work in 2014 to have a little more ram than this.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Development work in the richer countries, yes. In the not so rich countries 1G is still quite normal and a program that's conservative (if using 512M can be called conservative in this case) with RAM is to be appreciated at all times, even when you have lots of it.

cwyers 12y ago

"Emacs: The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread If It Wasn’t For The Fact That Emacs Was Actually Invented Before Sliced Bread." That's gold.

SeoxyS 12y ago
Well, it would be, if it were true. I'm pretty sure Emacs was invented after 1928. Half a century later, actually. I found that claim really odd. Maybe there's a joke or reference in there I'm not getting? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliced_bread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sliced_bread https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs
- fafner 12y ago
  It's simply a joke about Emacs having a long history. Don't take it too seriously. Just like the "greatest thing since sliced bread" phrase. I mean sliced bread is not great at all.
  - vkjv 12y ago
    You've clearly not had to make a sandwich with bread that isn't sliced. Sliced bread is amazing.
    - fafner 12y ago
      I rarely buy sliced bread. But then again I usually buy real bread and not that "toast"-thing, which seems to be mislabelled as "bread" in the anglosphere.
      - broodbucket 12y ago
        I can't believe I'm witnessing a bread elitist. Bread, of all things. Not knocking your opinion as I will admit to being a bread plebeian, but wow.
        12y ago

naner 12y ago

This sort of thing is very important. One of the (many) issues that hinders open source projects is that it is difficult to jump into the code, even for experienced developers. Every project can benefit by making contributing easy and building as quick and painless as possible. I still remember a couple years ago I wanted to contribute to Chromium. I took one look at the build instructions and decided I didn't want to contribute that badly...

GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago

This will be an interesting test to see if the claim 'emacs development was held back because of it's VCS' actually holds.

aaronem 12y ago
I doubt that was the only barrier.
- broodbucket 12y ago
  It's not the only barrier but it is a barrier. I never would've considered contributing to Emacs but now I might if I have free time.

to3m 12y ago

I had a patch to emacs accepted about a year ago and I just used the previous git mirror for everything. esr's apparent attempts to get everybody to move to git are a little quixotic, I have to say - but if it happens, it's probably a good thing. Where a DVCS is a good fit, then you might as well use git. But even while I support this move and assume workflow will be improved for emacs regulars, I wonder whether it will prove so valuable for occasional contributors. (N.B., I'm English, so I guess what I mean is: I don't believe that this will make much difference.) I've now seen a couple of attempts to frame this change that way and I'm not sure I buy it.

fafner 12y ago
bzr is a DVCS. But anyway: bzr has simply become a barrier. Not only to attract new developers but also some long term contributors have ceased contributions because they considered bzr to be too much of a hassle. But it's not only that git has simply become the vcs everybody knows. Bazaar development has stopped and it's in "maintenance mode", which sadly means that some bugs aren't getting fixed. Switching to git therefore made sense from several perspectives.
- deng 12y ago
  > but also some long term contributors have ceased contributions because they considered bzr to be too much of a hassle I wonder who those could be. I can't remember any major contributor leaving because of bzr.
  - fafner 12y ago
    E.g., * John Wiegley, author of eshell and other things. * The ada-mode was moved to GNU elpa because the maintainer didn't want to work with bzr.
- to3m 12y ago
  Yes, bzr is a DVCS. And when a DVCS is a good fit, you might as well use git! Which is what they're doing. My point wasn't that switching to git isn't a good idea, just that my guess would be that out of all the reasons why people might not contribute to emacs development the VCS in use is not a huge factor. But, I myself used the git mirror rather than bother with bzr. And this certainly is giving emacs some publicity, which (as I understand it) is always a good thing. And if it's being spun as some kind of a push to be friendlier to new developers, mabye the whole exercise will indeed prove more significant than I expect? Anyway, fortunately we are now in a position to test my theory, one way or the other ;)

victorr 12y ago

Does Vim have a source repository like this? I could only find https://code.google.com/p/vim/ https://code.google.com/p/vim/ , but there are only 3 contributors

thristian 12y ago
That's the official Vim repository, yes. There are a lot of contributors to Vim, but for consistency with the way Vim patches were handled before it had an SCM, changes are sent as diffs to the mailing-list and manually committed by Bram, rather than just being slurped into the repository with the original author information intact.
Arkanosis 12y ago
Yes: http://www.vim.org/mercurial.php http://www.vim.org/mercurial.php