[Chicken-users] Subversion support misguided IMHO

[Brandon J. Van Every]

felix winkelmann wrote:
> On 1/5/07, Brandon J. Van Every <address@hidden> wrote:
> >  I haven't considered whether building from a Subversion repository
> > introduces a difficulty.  I do know you won't be able to build a 
> > Changelog,
> > as you need a Darcs repository for that.  To be honest I don't 
> > understand
> > why we support a Subversion repository for Chicken proper.  Awhile back,
> > Felix was saying that he and myself were the only 2 people using Darcs.
> > Well, if everyone else is using Subversion, that would have a lot to 
> > do with
> > it.
>
> The subversion repo is just for people who don't have darcs. It's just 
> for
> convenience to get the latest development chicken. It is irregularly
> updated from the darcs repo, which is and remains the main development
> repository.

If I were making the decisions on such things, I would drop Subversion 
support and force people to use / learn Darcs.  I'd provide a HOWTO, of 
course.  The point is, Chicken needs more developers who are ready and 
capable of interacting with the core development tools.  When they are 
allowed to use source control that isn't actually used for development, 
they are allowed to have a work + psychological barrier that keeps them 
from taking "the next step" towards contributing.  I know I was in an 
"uuuuh, WTF is Darcs?" stage for a time, before I became motivated 
enough to start contributing.  I don't think Chicken is large enough or 
convenient enough to be worrying about "the masses of programmers who 
casually try things out."   Rather, Chicken needs to attract more core 
developers.  Also, lack of Subversion isn't a dealbreaker for people 
casually investigating Chicken.  We do provide source tarballs that 
actually build.


Cheers,
Brandon Van Every