[darcs-users] should 'changes' be renamed 'log'? (was: Re: SchwernLikesDarcs SchwernHatesDarcs)

[Karel Gardas]

Michael,

On Sun, 20 Mar 2005, Michael G Schwern wrote:

> You already have a large population of people who are comfortable with
> certain terminology (CVS/SVN users).  Leverage that.  This makes things
> easier.

IMHO this is not the best way for darcs and its users. The biggest problem
is that users of central repository based SCMs are 1) quite confused by
new functionality and terminology of advanced distributed SCMs and 2) more
generally, people migrating from one system to another often complain
about a need for learning something new.

But take it from the other side: you are now considering darcs. Why? It
seems your current systems do not satisfy your needs as you would like,
rigth? If so, then please take a breath and try to learn basics of darcs
while not comparing it to anything else -- except BitKeeper(TM) which
provides nearly similar working style.

FYI: I've migratted from CVS to Arch few years ago and it was really steep
learning curve, where Arch didn't help me a lot and in fact added quite a
lot of not so usefull complexity. Generally Arch is quite complex. IMHO
darcs's model is more simpler and in fact try to be the simplest for
distributed SCM.

> A command alias is such a simple concept I can't even consider it to be
> a violation of KISS.

IMHO it is violation of KISS. I like darcs very much especially because of
its tries and hard try of its author & darcs community to keep it as
simple as possible.

> In fact simplicity, from the user standpoint, would
> state "don't make me learn a whole new command set if I don't have to".

Imagine you don't know any SCM, i.e. forget anything what you know about
CVS/SVK and try to start with darcs. The problem is that you always
cosider your CVS/SVK knowledge and in this light you think about darcs.
IMHO this is wrong way, since then you would like to see darcs preassured
into your current SCMs working styles, which is wrong, since darcs is
simply completely different.

Cheers,
Karel
--
Karel Gardas                  kgardas at objectsecurity.com
ObjectSecurity Ltd.           http://www.objectsecurity.com