Re: [Caml-list] Moving ocaml to github (as well)

[Markus Mottl <markus.mottl@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Dec 22, 2013 at 11:41 AM, Gabriel Scherer
<gabriel.scherer@gmail.com> wrote:
> I understand that github provides an homogeneous experience so that users
> don't have to wonder about what the workflow is, and that OCaml users may
> need more explicit information about how to contribute (we can work on
> that). I'm a bit surprised that an expert user that is a long-time
> contributor on the bugtracker, such as Markus, would perceive a difference
> in difficulty/welcome-ness here.

I think people generally underestimate by how much lower contribution
hurdles or "better user experience" can improve adoption rates.  The
OPAM vs Godi story should act as a reminder for that.  It's not that
Godi couldn't do what OPAM does, in fact, I think it could do pretty
much all of what users and developers needed.  It's just that it
required developers and users to jump through a few more hoops to
achieve the intended results, enough to prevent it from gaining such
quick and wide adoption.

Some of the issues may be more perceived than real.  E.g. a
contributor might fear that their patch is more likely to be ignored
in a bug tracker, maybe because it clashes with newer changes due to
the lack of revision control.  But at the end of the day the only
thing that matters is whether a developer is willing to make a
contribution.  Your milage on larger, more complex projects may vary,
but when I translated/switched my projects from CVS to Mercurial on
Bitbucket (Github surely would be similar), the effort was so
laughably small, literally a few minutes per project, I'd find it hard
to believe that workarounds or improved documentation for better
interaction through SVN could possibly be worth it.

Regards,
Markus

-- 
Markus Mottl        http://www.ocaml.info        markus.mottl@gmail.com