[Python-Dev] I am now lost - committed, pulled, merged, what is "collapse"?

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

skip at pobox.com writes:

 > I believe it runs counter to the professed intention of the switch
 > away from a centralized version control system, to make it easier
 > for more people to contribute to Python.  It certainly seems harder
 > for this old dog.

Well, you may be an old dog, but you're also an early adopter.  That
means both that you get to pay for our mistakes (our = authors of PEPs
374 and 385), and that it's going to take a while to disentangle
implementation issues from the real long-run costs and benefits.

Costs of transition were admitted up front.  The professed intention
was to make things *harder* in the short run (but as little as
possible!), while making contribution to Python significantly more
attractive (but not necessarily less work!) in the long run.  I don't
think anybody tried to hide the fact that changing habits would be
required, or to claim that it would be costless.  There were a few
people with a Pollyanna "try it, you'll like it" attitude, but
certainly those of us involved in PEP 374 knew better than that -- we
knew there were people like you whose patterns of contribution worked
just fine with the svn-based workflow and didn't need or want to
change.  That's why PEP 374 was necessary!

Yes, based on the description you give of your principal contribution
pattern, you take a complexity/effort hit in the transition.  I think
it can be alleviated quite a bit with the help of your reports, but
that will take some time.  All I can say about that time is "Sorry!"
and "Thank you for trying the system while it's still in beta."

I hope you will give it some more time to shake down.