Date: Tue, 6 Apr 2010 12:00:37 -0400 From: John Culleton <john@...1668...> Subject: [Inkscape-user] Why Bazaar? To: Inkscape User Community inkscape-user@lists.sourceforge.net Message-ID: <201004061200.37373.john@...1668...> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Why oh why do we need yet another depository program? I can handle svn. I can even handle cmake, though it is a pain. But why not make the nightly update of Inkscape 48 available as a plain old tar ball?
The leaders of this project need to understand that users like me use a lot of open source software, Open COBOL, Tiny COBOL, Gimp, Scribus, Gvim, Mozilla in all its variants, Tcl/Tk and so on. Most of these projects stick to the familiar ./configure, make, make install sequence. Scribus just to be difficult insists on the cmake route, and I have finally puzzled that out. I can handle svn (replacement for cvs) with a little help. But what is Bazaar (perhaps bizarre would be a better name) and who else uses it?
Bazaar is a distributed version control system that offers many features that are anti-bizarre. For a software development project--particularly one that is physically dispersed and has multiple levels of commit privileges such as most open source projects--Bazaar offers substantial benefits. The Canonical/Ubuntu/Kubuntu/?buntu crew has moved most revision control to Bazaar...because bzr makes it easy for marginally-techies to contribute. This site explains further...http://jam-bazaar.blogspot.com/2007/10/bazaar-vs-subversion.html
The leaders of projects are not in cahoots about what system to use for versioning, make-ing, etc. There is no FOSS governing body dictating tool selection. And for every "user like me", there are many users not like you that also have preferences.
"Scribus just to be difficult..." Well probably not "just" with the intention of being difficult. It might have something to do with--make is Unix-ish, while Scribus is cross platform. Many users of open source software run on platforms other than ...N*X. Many M$ Office users have abandoned Publisher in favor of Scribus.
Chin up, John. These technical details are part of the FOSS fun. 8^)
Carl