[Numpy-discussion] DVCS at PyCon

[Gael Varoquaux]

On Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 07:38:42PM +0900, David Cournapeau wrote:
> But that's a development tool. I think it is expected that people have
> to somewhat learn something about it. I agree we should care about
> barrier of entry - if there is no way to make Josef happy, for
> example, that would be a really strong argument against git.

I remeber years ago, when I wanted to help out in projects, not
understanding CVS was a big issue, and slowed my involvement by probably
a year at least.

Developping in Python is fairly easy, at least for simple things. We can
coach someone into writing a simple pure-Python numerical algorithm for
scipy, and teach him tests and coding convention. It would be a pitty if
the workflow made it hard. You have spent a huge amount of time improving
the build system. That's an important part. The VCS is another. The
easiest it is for a grad student to download the development version of
scipy, build it, and do small modifications to it, propagated upstream,
the better it is for the project. And remember, most people are never
taught version control.

Gaël