On Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 10:37, "Martin v. Löwis"
There's a possible third way. I've heard (though haven't investigated) that some people are working on supporting the svn wire protocol in the bzr server. This would mean that anybody who's still comfortable with svn and feels no need to change their current habits can continue to work the way they always have. Those that want the extra benefits of a DVCS, or who do not have commit access to the code.python.org branches would have viable alternatives.
Of course, those without commit access *already* have viable alternatives, IIUC, by means of the automatic ongoing conversion of the svn repository to bzr and hg (and, IIUC, git - or perhaps you can use git-svn without the need for server-side conversion).
So a conversion to a DVCS would only benefit those committers who see a benefit in using a DVCS (*) (and would put a burden on those committers who see a DVCS as a burden). It would also put a burden on contributors who are uncomfortable with using a DVCS.
Regards, Martin
(*) I'm probably missing something, but ISTM that committers can already use the DVCS - they only need to create a patch just before committing. This, of course, is somewhat more complicated than directly pushing the changes to the server, but it still gives them most of what is often reported as the advantage of a DVCS (local commits, ability to have many branches simultaneously, ability to share work-in-progress, etc). In essence, committers wanting to use a DVCS can do so today, by acting as if they were non-committers, and only using svn for actual changes to the master repository.
If I can't choose a clear winner I am going to look into what it take to run directly on top of svn to avoid the extra step for committers. Otherwise I will get standardized instructions for the three DVCSs and maybe write a script or three to make it dead-simple to work with the DVCSs but have our official repository be svn so we can all use the DVCSs as we see fit until a clear winner springs up. -Brett