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(a)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