[Python-Dev] Looking for VCS usage scenarios

[Paul Moore]

2008/11/5 Stephen J. Turnbull <stephen at xemacs.org>:
>  > I see no excuse to let the fact that it's Python make it acceptable
>  > to have an application with otherwise unacceptable performance.
>
> Barry and many others obviously find the performance of non-git VCSes
> acceptable.  On the other hand, Brett has conceded that git's
> performance has enough fans that it has to be on the table (even
> though he admits to a strong bias against it, that's the major
> concession).

Oy! "Non-git VCSes" indeed! :-)

Barry and others find the performance of *Bazaar* acceptable. I (and
equally many others, I believe) don't. Mercurial is significantly
faster than Bazaar (I don't know how Mercurial speed compares to git
but both are orders of magnitude faster than Bazaar in at least some
cases).

I believe that the performance of Bazaar is still its major
disadvantage, regardless of the Bazaar developers' ongoing work on the
issue and the often-repeated "well, yes, but if you do things this
way, that's much faster" workarounds.

> Performance is *always* a consideration.  IMO, now that it has been
> acknowledged that performance varies considerably among VCSes, it's
> more important at this point to figure out what Python development's
> *other* requirements are.

That is a fair point. My instinct is that python-dev's requirements on
a DVCS are likely to be fairly basic (at least initially) and most
DVCSes will be able to satisfy them. At that point, the arguments get
more difficult ("nice to have" extra features which may not actuially
get used in practice, we don't know without experience, versus
immediate performance benefits which could easily change over time).

Paul.