[Python-3000] not switching core VCS (was How to override io.BytesIO and io.StringIO with their optimized C version?)

[Nick Coghlan]

Matt Nordhoff wrote:
> Christian Heimes wrote:
>> Do the new feature justify the extra burden on the core developers to
>> learn a new VCS and new tools?
> 
> Once everybody switches to bzr/git/hg, that won't be a problem anymore! :-D
> 
> Well, the core developers don't experience one of the main disadvantages
> of svn: that non-core developers don't have the ability to make their
> own branches or commit. But I would still say that the more branchy and
> history-preserving workflow is absolutely worth it.

I think getting over this hurdle is going to be the deal breaker. While 
I suspect such a switch will happen eventually (as I believe the DVCS 
approach really is a better one for open source projects), there also 
doesn't seem to be anything which is a major driver for making this 
change in the case of Python in particular. The CVS to SVN change was a 
natural migration, since it didn't involve any real changes to the 
existing development workflow and brought a lot of direct benefits to 
the core developers (and got us away from the Sourceforge CVS 
repository, which we'd been having a few problems with).

For migrating from a centralised to a distributed VCS though, since the 
PSF repository is the upstream of all of the derived builds, it doesn't 
really gain any major benefits from the switch (the major activity which 
could have benefited - the parallel 2.6 and 3.0 development - should be 
effectively over by the time this comes up for discussion as a serious 
proposal). And downstream can get a pretty good work-alike by creating a 
vendor branch in their own preferred DVCS and making their modifications 
based on that (the only bit missing is integrated tracking of submitted 
changes which are accepted back into the central repository).

But I certainly don't see any reason for urgency - what we have now 
works reasonably well, and I personally don't want to contemplate any 
major procedural changes until both 3.0 and 2.6 are out the door.

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
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