Re: [9fans] bell-labs website and plan9

["Devon H. O'Dell" <devon.odell@gmail.com>]

2007/4/9, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com>:
> possibly inflammatory question: the ideas I've seen proposed so far
> don't seem superior in any way to, e.g., mercurial.
>
> Please note, I am sorry if this letter sounds offensive, I do not
> intend it to be.
>
> If, somehow, the proposed ideas represent a huge leap in 'something',
> it would be nice to know what 'something' is; I'm not getting it from
> the descriptions. So far, it all sounds like a bit of a kludge to
> cover for our lack of tools and time to build them.
>
> If, instead, the proposed ideas are more of the usual "There is a
> better non-Plan 9 system but we don't run it because we (a) can't
> compile it (b) don't have software to run it (c) we didn't invent it
> (i.e. NIH)", well, then, it's time to start bringing those better
> systems in, and put our efforts elsewhere.

That's in part what vcs is supposed to be, but I don't think it's
really going to be good for anything other than small projects any
time soon. I've asked you several times off-list about the status of
Python and hg and getting these to work, but I haven't received a
response yet, so I don't know if you got them. I got hg partially
working, but then ran into dependencies on signal handlers and didn't
take the time to remove them / change them to use Notes. Any
information on the hg status and how one can help with that would be
nice.

> My take is that bringing in mercurial, and then using mercurial with
> mounted file systems, instead of ssh, would be quite neat. And, we are
> close to having it. We've got python, almost. We've just about got
> python modules -- actually, I've had them for months. Lots of bits
> work that did not used to. We really are pretty close.
>
> Take the best of both worlds, in other words, and create something
> new. But, if you can take other's good work, that can be a timesaver.
>
> thanks
>
> ron

As far as an SCM goes, it would be nice to have one, but I'm sure it
has to run in Plan 9. The big problem that I have with hg and my own
vcs is that neither is really suited for maintaining multiple
branches. At this point, vcs is small and incomplete enough to make
this doable, but it's going to be way too slow anyway. And it's not
going to be in a complete enough state to manage an OS for quite some
time to come, either.

--dho